Jill Duggar reacts to brother Joseph's arrest in latest family scandal

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Jill Duggar Dillard is responding to accusations against her brother, fellow "19 Kids and Counting" star Joseph Duggar.

In the Dillards' longstanding blog, the family said it was "shocked" to learn of Duggar's arrest. Duggar, 31, was charged with lewd and lascivious behavior involving sexual activity with a 14-year-old girl, who was 9 at the time of the alleged incident, the Bay County Sheriff's Office in Florida announced Wednesday, March 18.

The reality-TV alum admitted to his actions to law enforcement in the city of Tontitown in northern Washington County, Arkansas, after the child's father confronted Duggar about the incidents on March 17, according to the sheriff's office.

"We first learned of anything related to his charges yesterday via a text from a friend who messaged us about the recent media reports of Joseph's arrest and his alleged confession to molesting a juvenile female in 2020," the Dillard family wrote in a blog post Thursday, March 19. "We are shocked and heartbroken."

During a forensic interview, the child disclosed several moments involving Duggar during a 2020 family vacation in Panama City Beach, Florida, the sheriff's office said. In one of these alleged instances, Duggar repeatedly asked the child to sit on his lap, and in another manipulated the child's underwear and grazed her genitals on a couch and under a blanket.