14 DAY TRIAL // Jill (nee Duggar) and husband Derick Dillard have acknowledged talk that they used money they received as donations for their missionary work in Central America to fund “family vacations,” by offering donors the possibility of asking for refunds.
The Duggars have been surrounded by controversy since this spring, when older police records were uncovered, exposing eldest son Josh Duggar as a child molester. Scrutiny in the entire family only got more severe in the following months, as they were repeatedly accused of hypocrisy.
Jill and Derick give the money back
One such reported act of hypocrisy was Jill and Derick asking for donations for their missionary work in Central America. They announced they would move there for missionary work and took to their website to ask for whatever support their fans could provide. It wasn’t insignificant, as per reports.
The problem was that, even though they made it clear that they planned on making Central America their permanent residence, they returned to the US after just 2 months and didn’t show any more signs they wanted to leave again.
So many of those who had given them money thought they got scammed and that the Dillars were “fake missionaries.” Confirmation that they didn’t qualify as actual missionaries and had been “commissioned through prayer” only helped to strengthen that impression, and outrage online threatened to become deafening.
As we speak, the Dillards’ donation page includes a mention that allows donors to ask for refunds, should they wish it. The Daily Mail says that it was not there before.
It’s not an admission of guilt and it’s not even a public statement acknowledging the controversy, but is an actual act of acknowledgement nonetheless.
The world turns on the Duggars
Since the above-mentioned Josh Duggar scandal, which was followed by another one in less than 3 months, exposing him as a cheater, the world has been slowly turning against the Duggars.
The numerous, strictly religious family had been a fixture with the network TLC for years thanks to their reality show 19 Kids and Counting, but all of a sudden, everything they did or said was called into question.
If the family kept Josh’s molestation details under wraps and if Josh, a family values activist, had cheated on his wife with randoms on Ashley Madison, what else were the Duggars keeping from the public that had lined their pockets by tuning in for their show religiously, buying their merchandise and looking up to them as role models?