The System That Built the Duggars — A Psychotherapist Who Survived Fundamentalism Breaks It Down

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This is Hidden Tillers Live, with Tony Brusky and Robin Green.

Before the Dugger arrests and the federal convictions, the Institute in Basic Life Principles, the IBLP,

Tothat Fathers had complete authority over their families and used religion to say that being silent meant being obedient.

To understand what's happening with this family now, it helps us look at the system that influenced them.

And we are going to do just that today in a very long conversation about the IBLP and the Duggers and everything in the ecosystem that surrounds it.

And to do just that, one of our favorite guests of Robin and myself, Shavan Scott, is with a psychotherapist and author to help us break all of this down.

You have such a unique insight into a world like this because you grew up in a fundamentalist religious system.

And by the way, if you want to learn about Shavan's experiences in that, here's your book, Nightbird.

Very, very powerful and very raw.

I do highly suggest checking that out.

When you look at what the IBLP was actually teaching, the total parental authority, the submission doctrine,

and you heard the news this week of these new charges that have come out, what came to your mind?

What do you recognize, Shavan, when you hear these stories that most people watching this are missingly, just doesn't come to their mind?

It's an extreme cult. I heard about it when I was a kid growing up, and particular faith churches that I was involved in were extreme and were cult-like.

But this was above and beyond, you know, the homeschooling, the dressing kids alike, this television show, which I never watched because, frankly, all this stuff just made my skin crawl.

But it's a cult, with total psychological control, obedience equals holiness, it's black and white thinking, you know, you either do it our way, or you're on Satan's side.

And so it's based upon fear, raising kids in this really restrictive environment where they have no voice, they never question authority.

Thinking is dangerous, and the outside world is, they're completely cut off from it, so it's incredibly disruptive to normal child development.

You know, Shavan, you brought up a really powerful word there that a few of our listeners tuned into the last couple of days, and that's the homeschooling aspect of it.

And I'd love for you to kind of talk about the homeschooling aspect, because there's homeschooling, then there's indoctrination.

And that's what this is really, so could you explore for us what kind of homeschooling slash indoctrination that was kind of being exposed to here, and also, you know, maybe in your own experience as well.

And I want to caveat real quick, we're not, we're not, you know, pooing homeschooling as a whole.

That's why I want people say that's why I want to go down this road.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, between homeschooling, there's a big difference in education, and then indoctrination, a big difference between education and indoctrination.

It's an excellent point, because when my kids were little in California, a lot of people were homeschooling, and it was looked at as a way to give kids a more customized experience.

People still took their kids to activities, to museums, they got together with other families.

So it wasn't this motivation to keep them pure and to keep them obedient.

And so yes, you're talking about entirely different families with entirely different motives.

It can be done in a very benign, even healthy way.

But in this case, I guarantee you, the kids were drilled on the Bible, the Bible, the Bible.

And there's a whole curriculum put out for Christian homeschoolers, which may have something called science, but it's basically just regurgitating the Bible and calling it science.

Everything is based upon their interpretation of scripture.

So very different.

When people watch this television show, the 19 kids encountering or whatever incarnation of it, it was in its season when it ran for 10 years on TLC.

So many people watch this show, and they found something warm and fuzzy about it.

I think a lot of us were like, it was nails on a chalkboard, it was creepy, it was weird, it felt odd, it felt off.

But for so many people, and I remember watching good-hearted people, people that were not cult members, that were not abusive to their families, that were not horrible individuals, they looked at it.

And the way it was portrayed, obviously we saw the very best version of them on the television show.

There wasn't like, and now what's going on behind those doors?

It was very much, look at this, isn't this cute?

Sometimes when people stop at the Amish pie stand, isn't this cute? Isn't this lovely?

You have zero control over your own life, but these pies are delicious.

It felt like that to a certain extent. Why do you think it is? Why did so many people eat up the doggers?

And what was clearly very much a coercively controlled lifestyle?

People found it as being very, very homie and colloquial.

Yes, it really is a mystery to me. I should find some of these episodes and go back and do an analysis of the careful editing that went on.

Because we know, I mean, lots of evidence, kids raised in fear where their ability to think is stamped out.

They do not develop normally, and they end up with a lot of anxiety and depression and relationship problems.

But obviously that was hidden. And if this was presented as some kind of an ideal, people must have been inspired to copy aspects of it or at least try.

And I think that's insidious.

Yes.

Yeah, the fear factor is major because I've just about finished a book that Jill Dugger wrote as well as the Shiny Happy People series on Amazon Prime.

And there's some really striking things in here about the education system and again, this is just quoting from this, not my opinion.

These are just quotes from people that are in that system saying that the largest amount of math they were taught was fractions.

Because that's the only thing they needed to be taught in order to cook was fractions.

And then Jill herself and others, the fear they had of creating a sin as defined by IBLP, they had nightmares of burning in hell.

I mean, the fear factor was so massive at such a young age for that control because it is really a control aspect of absolutely everything.

And I identify with that one as a child. I remember by age five, I had definitely an anxiety disorder from all of it and laying awake at night, imagining hell and I had terrible insomnia.

And stuff that I was kind of wired for anxiety and it still affects me to this day.

How do you talk yourself out of this automatic thinking that you go into that there's this force that's going to punish you by that?

It's horrible for kids.

I hear you. You obviously grew up in a much more extreme religious environment than I did. I grew up in a religious environment as well. I grew up Lutheran.

They're good people. For the most part, they're harmless. They make fish in the basement of the church and they're really for the most part not bad.

But there are in any group of religious folks or some that are more extreme than others.

But there's also a lot of things that go on and I don't know that this is what is going on today in the Wisconsin Synod where Missouri Synod Lutheran churches are the two that I had been part of as a child.

But there were so many things that were just second nature that they just did with the kids. They just told the kids that were part of the teachings, the Sunday schools, the daily lessons, all that, that were just, well, this is what we teach.

And nobody thought anything weird of it. I mean, I remember coloring books. I would love to try and get my hands on some of the coloring books from the 70s and 80s that they gave kids and these things.

I remember like drawing Saul's wife turning into a pillar of salt as they ran away from Sodom and Gomorrah and you're like literally drawing the fire.

And like, can I borrow the blue? I think like kind of a light blue might be appropriate for Saul's wife that just turned into a pillar of salt.

Well, why did she turn? Because she looked back. She had the horrible sin of looking back at the destruction that they were running from and because God said, don't, well, guess what? You're a salt lick now.

I mean, this is the shit that they taught children. I mean, I know it's in the Bible that way. But the indoctrination of this fear in kind of a happy, go lucky way because you're coloring this and then five minutes later, oh, animal cracker time.

Well, they weaponized religion. Yes, completely. And it's not just the extreme groups like the IBLP that do these sort of things.

This was, this is just mainstream little Lutheran church in the neighborhood that, you know, and nobody thought anything weird of it. The parents didn't think anything weird of it.

And I don't blame them because everybody would be indoctrinated into this sort of a world. But it's like every religion to a certain extent or every version of whatever you have,

they go to the death and destruction and the fear of factors so earlier, at least they used to it for a long time with the young children.

The damage that that must do. Can you speak to that?

Well, the one that used to torment me was Jacob. I may get the Old Testament names mixed up even though at one time I could have told you all of them.

I get it mixed up now too. Jacob, who was to prove his love by God by murdering sacrificing his son.

Oh, yeah, that's a five time. I've done that coloring page on that. Yeah.

He was on the altar, laid him down on the altar and had the knife ready and then the angel stopped him and said, okay, you don't have to do it.

You proven your loyalty here. I was like, who could I kill? What if I were in that position? What if I, you know, I were the one that was going to be sacrificed.

And that just horrified me. Talk about, I mean, if they would just stick with Jesus in the New Testament, right?

Well, what kind of, I mean, if you're an adult and you're trying to understand the story and the greater, bigger, 10,000 foot or 100,000 foot overview lesson of these parables.

An adult mind can understand, I mean, even though a lot of it's pretty wonky, you can kind of get, oh, okay, I kind of get the point they're trying to make here.

But it's seven. You're just like, oh, he's going to kill his kid and he's waiting for the angel to say stop.

You know, it's, the kids aren't going to get it. But they seem to miss that children aren't going to understand this shit and they take it all way too literal.

Or they doing it on purpose because again, it goes to control and fear, which be true, part of the indoctrination.

You know, what was really striking, you know, in the series and learning about this was the authority and how that authority works in that.

And, you know, Tony put up the graphic for a number of days, you know, the umbrellas of authority.

But the infallibility of authority is where they gain their control.

Because I was really thinking about this. So here's Jill, the oldest daughter in the Dugor family.

How did she come to break from this? And so this is going to be, this leads my question for Shivon.

She was able to break, again, no cycle analyst on my side.

But what had happened was she saw a chink in her father's armor when he deceived her.

Intentionally, the day before she got married and she, and he connived her into signing the contract that obligated her in her entire life.

Photographs of the birth, delivery, wedding, everything without compensation except to the father for five years.

And so he deceived her. And so when she finally, this comes to light and discovers this, that's the chink that said,

oh my god, she didn't think this consciously, but this is where the chink happened.

The authority is valuable. And then the whole thing started crumbling.

So without that, how does someone recognize internally if they even can that this system is broken?

Yeah. Yeah. At some point, many people who are raised under this kind of religious system, they start to develop critical thinking skills.

And a light bulb comes on. Something goes too far for them. Now that doesn't happen for everybody.

And some people just grow up and replicate the pattern. But I know for me, the light bulb started coming on for me at about 18.

And that was the group I was involved in was big into face healing.

And if you had faith, you would be healed if you didn't have faith, you wouldn't.

So if somebody died or had a child that died, it was their fault.

And this started to not add up to me that that was a line that went too far.

And then of course, my mother, when I was 16, died of cancer.

And we were all praying. We were doing all the right things, you know, we called the 700 club help line.

They were praying. She's been healed. Well, she wasn't healed. And she died.

And that was a real blow for me that I think made the light bulb come on.

You know, this stuff just doesn't work. And there was another case where a child had leukemia, little boy at age five.

And of course, they were praying and he was going to be healed. And he wasn't. He died.

And then they said they took it to well, don't to the parents. Don't get the body involved and involved because God is going to raise him up at the funeral.

And he's going to come back to life and be resurrected. Well, guess what? That didn't happen. He was no zombie.

Yeah. So what I let down. No, no, no. And I will throw though, though, though, there are, you know, whether it's prayer or the positive energy,

there actually are studies where where the amount of positive energy groups and organizations put out through meditation actually can affect things.

So I will throw there is some, some pseudo science on that out there.

I have not read anything scientific that impressed me on it.

It's interesting. So Joe D'Spenza in his works, Dr. Joe D'Spenza, what the hell's the name, becoming supernatural actually talks a lot about what he found through the studies of that.

They actually, anyway, I, I, I, I dress on this thing. I just, I don't want to discount people's faith in their, in their prayers, what I'm trying to do.

And this is just my, my position, right, coming from my angle. A lot of people find prayer soothing.

If it helps them, it's meditative. It helps them cope. It can serve a psychological purpose for them. I have a dear friend who's a therapist and she said, you know, I don't really believe in God, but I still pray because it makes me feel better.

If it makes you feel better, do it. And, and I do not have all knowledge. And I can't say that there's never effect and effect from it.

But certainly in my growing experience, I believed in it. I was taught that. But I, I saw that it did not fit with reality. And fortunately, I was, I was reading a lot.

And I was open to new ideas. I went to the library all the time. And of course, if you've read my book, you know, I was married in a mother at 16 because of the face.

And I was breaking free by developing the ability to think my own thoughts. And at some point, something happens for people, whatever it may be, where as you say, they see a chink in the armor.

And thinking starts to kick in. And once they start to develop their own ability to critical think, they can look back on the whole thing.

And make an assessment of it. And that's often where people say, you know, I don't, I don't swallow this anymore and step away. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, that damn thinking, they don't like it when you say to do that curiosity, you know what?

You're out. I mean, you start. Yeah. You become the black sheep when you start asking questions. And they just kind of know, well, we lost one.

And then you get shunned. Yeah. You do. I mean, you really do. You start to get looked at as like, oh, well, maybe the kids shouldn't play with that one because that one thinks.

And you know what they do. And the land. So, you know, in the homage culture, they shun you, which is a very powerful thing. You're cut off.

And what they did in IBLP, you know, and, you know, Jim Bob said it's all time. You will no longer be under the protective umbrella. Yeah.

You know, so they, they, they, they shamed you with fear of no longer being protected. Again, that fear, fear, fear.

I mean, they, they love their umbrellas in IBLP. I mean, that's their whole damn thing. I want to take it back for a second.

We're talking about, um, Jim Bob, you know, allegedly deceiving her essentially with that contract on her. I believe it was her wedding.

For the birth, writing was was day before the wedding, day before the wedding, where it was basically sign off everything.

And, you know, you're thinking your father has your best interest at heart. I mean, this is what you've been raised to believe.

And she signs the damn thing. And, and it being, um, deceptive. And, and depending how you're looking at it, one could go,

oh, Jim Bob is sitting there in the corner going, I'm going to deceive her. I'm going to go sneak this in. And hopefully she doesn't realize what she's signing.

I don't know that he's sitting there thinking that, you know, because, because I think, in my opinion, they're, he's seeing it as normal.

He's saying, this is just the modality. This is how it works. I don't think he's, he's not over in the corner being evil.

Oh, how can I deceive my children? That, that's not, I mean, I just, that's not. And that's why I think when, when they're confronted with these realities and these challenges from society, saying,

this isn't okay. This is, this was pretty shitty what you did over here. That's not how they saw it all when they were doing it. And, and they're, they're also unable to do a whole lot of,

uh, introspectively looking at their actions and go, hey, maybe I should see it from a different way. Luckily, the girls did. And they, they for a long time just saw it the same way that, that Jim Bob allegedly sees it as,

I'm looking out for my children. It's part of the umbrella. It's part of the system. They are breaking the system. If they want to get out from the umbrella,

and if they're going to do that, well, then according to my belief system, then, well, good luck to them. This is why you get the stories where, well, your inheritance is going to be reduced and threats and this and that.

But again, they're not looking at it as a threat or, or, or necessarily, it is 1,000% control, but they don't see it as that because they've redefined it in their mind as something else as love, as, as the direction, as, as they're the shepherd guiding the flock.

And it's also done by God, also done by God. That's who said it. That's who the, you know, when you look at their website and go to their videos on authority, that's exactly what happens is they talk about the authority authority of God and God.

God made this hierarchy and structure and you must obey to it because if you don't, well, then you're going to burn in hell. Again, the fear factor comes in.

Yeah, exactly.

Then you add words in like, well, it's witchcraft, if you look at something other than, than what I'm saying.

Let's talk about this because this obviously, I'm going to say, I'm going to go on the limb here and, and say, it seems the Dugger family doesn't quite understand contraceptives.

They don't seem to either believe in them or understand their use.

And they have deliberately kept sex education out of their homeschool curriculum.

They even went on the 19 kids and counting when the, when Josh got married, they were said, the cute little segment where they fumbled through the idea of sex.

And I think I kind of know what I'm talking about that even though he's already did all the sisters and we all in Jim Bob knew that.

But for TV, it's like, oh, he said, he knows nothing about this.

Let's talk about that a little bit because they keep the education out of their curriculum.

But clearly in this family, some of the boys figured it out pretty early of what their parts did or what they were interested in.

What, what does that specific deprivation do to a developing young adults when you're not going to educate them and you're going to keep them completely isolated from society where they might be able to pick pieces up here and there.

It really stunts their development because they don't know what normal is.

They don't have boundaries and particularly for the daughters, how do they even have a language to report what's happened, right?

Because secrecy is a virtue.

And girls typically in these kinds of systems have no power. They have no voice.

They are diminished. They, they're not as valuable as the boys.

And it's something that really sets them up.

Boys don't know what normal, do they understand what masturbation is?

Do they even have a clue on who it's okay to touch and who it isn't okay to touch?

They don't have the information and the knowledge. So they really are handicapped.

And it's just, it's just a petri dish for awful things to happen sexually.

You know, this, this, we talked about this before the show, we even started this non-correcting doctrine that people have.

And the author, Noah Havari, who I've quoted a few times, he wrote the book, Sapiens and Homo Deus.

And then the last book is Nexus. And that's how human beings communicate.

Systems that actually are self-correcting systems that can evolve both documentary as well as spoken and everything are our healthy systems.

But when you have a system like this one that is not self-correcting, these things happen.

But it still blows my mind and so Shavon, how is it that a father can now have two sons that have done horrendous things to their sisters and others,

most likely cause because of this system, this non-correcting system of education.

And yet he still doubles down on that non-correcting system.

He is still involved with the church. He is still doing these things, yet it is completely wrecked lives.

How is it that someone does not see that and correct and move on and grow?

It's amazing the ability that some people have to dilute themselves and to not see reality.

Some people are really good at it. And the ways that people will rationalize their kids' horrendous behavior and their own horrendous behavior.

And the other thing that's occurred to me, we know about a certain amount of abuse.

There could be lots more abuse that went on that we don't know about.

Because often in these families too, it's not only the girls that are molested, boys are molested by older brothers.

And that's something that people really feel a lot of shame about and tend not to talk about.

Sometimes they never talk about it or they talk about it decades later as they're older.

And they don't even know because they don't even have the words for it.

It's a mind blowing. They don't even equip them with words to understand it's a porn behavior.

Yeah, it just blows your head.

It's the magic of the IBLP.

I mean, it's just, it's nuts.

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