Anya Cain (51:42)
Oh, yeah. I mean, you know, it's. It's totally insincere. It's just phoniness. I'm sorry. Like, I. It's. It actually disgusts me on a visceral level. I mean, Megyn Kelly, I mean, to her credit, I mean, she's asking them some. You know, I think a lot of people felt that at the time that this was a pretty softball interview. It was a sympathetic interview. And I think aspects of it certainly play that way when I watch it. But I think she actually asked him some pretty tough questions in terms of, like, I think they were framed softer, perhaps than others would have framed them. But I feel like saying, like, hey, had you acted earlier, the youngest victim would not have been victimized. What do you think about that? And having him be like, well, kids make bad decisions. You know, it's like, no, you made a bad decision and that hurt your other children. You know, like, these things happen. These things can happen in any family. I, I'm really. I. I see sometimes people saying, well, these people subscribe to extremely patriarchal and frankly, misogynistic culture. So therefore, you know, it's natural that predators would come up in this. And I think I understand where that thinking comes from, but it is. It's actually kind of dangerous because I don't care where you are, who you are, socioeconomic background, race, religion, lack of religion, you know, whether. Whether you're in a conservative community, a progressive community, moderate community, I don't care where you are. Predators exist. Every background. Ask anybody who works in that, you know, it doesn't matter who you are. There are. They're going to be predators. You know, no one is immune to this. The difference, though, in this situation, I think this speaks to the danger of a system that puts such an onus on young girls and women to manage the sexual needs and desires of boys and young men and men in general. I think the danger here is not that it's going to produce necessarily more predators just because it, you know, it's. It's like, let's subjugate the women. I think it's more that when predators exist, instead of dealing with it in a way that is, you know, victim centric and logical, the impulse is to minimize and the impulse is to sweep it away. I could envision situations where a family might learn about some of this and just tell the girls to just shut up and, you know, that's your older brother. We're not doing anything about it. In this case. It sounds like, to be fair, where we can be fair, it sounds like Jim Bob and Michelle took some action. They may have felt that that was the right action. I think what they did was extremely dangerous, and I think what they did was sweep it under the rug. They may have not felt that way, but when I see this, it's like, you know, they claim they went to Arkansas state police with him and that he divulged all this to a trooper who later turned out to be a pedophile him. So, I mean, it's hard to say. Like, they say, yeah, well, we went to the law. But, like, I don't know, the trooper disputes, like, he said that Josh only told him about one incident. It's this whole thing. So I don't know who to believe in that situation, to be honest, because everybody has credibility problems. But it's. It's just very troubling. I feel very sorry for Josh's victims. And then they were kind of traumatized with the. How this all came out. Ben, the thing, though, about Josh is that we can't just look at him and say, well, he did it when he was very young, blah, blah, blah, because we know the problematic behavior continued, and we know that he went on to be somebody who was found in with possession of child sexual abuse materials. So whatever they were trying to do to help him stem those abusive and bad urges, ultimately, you know, whatever their intent was on that, it obviously didn't work. And again, I'm not saying, like, I don't know if that can be cured or if you can do early intervention and kind of get someone off that path or if he would have inevitably ended up there anyway. I don't know. I'm not educated enough about that. But it certainly doesn't seem like something like this would set somebody up for success doing construction work over the summer, you know, that might be good for a young boy who's kind of, maybe, I don't know, like, doesn't know any responsibility. So you're like, hey, get a job, you know, do some. Do some hard work and get out there and be outside and kind of have some responsibility, like, you know, encouraging your child to get out and get involved, like, like, that can be a good thing, but not for, like, sexual abuse. That just doesn't make any sense, you know, And I'm not saying that somebody's religious faith can't play a role in them healing or, or dealing with issues. I mean, I'm certainly not saying that, but saying that, like, at some point, it's time to bring in the professionals, you know, it's time to get serious. Yeah, like, you know, the, you know, I don't know, like, there's. There's. There's more resources, but. Yeah, so that's kind of where they left. This is, this is, though, I'll kind of close with this. This is something that Megan Kelly asked Jim Bob and Michelle and I, I. This was what stuck with me, too. And I think this is also going viral because people were like, oh, you Know, like, they knew that there were other predators in the family. Megan says, did you ever worry that the treatment didn't work, especially with so many young children in the house? Josh or Jim Bob? No. Josh was a change person, Michelle. And we still had those safeguards in place. I mean, like, it's just we were there. Were there a lot of things that changed in our understanding as parents with you? This, this first child, first son, you know, to come to this place in his life. We, like, there's things that we learned ever since that I think, you know what, we don't let boys babysit. We don't let, you know, they don't play hide and seek together. Two, don't go off and hide. I mean, there's just a lot of things that we put in place. And we said, you know, you're not alone in a room. When someone. With someone else, you're always out. Visible little ones don't sit on big boys, lapse. Or people you don't know, or even family members, you know, unless it's your daddy, you know, so there's just boundaries that we've learned, end quote. This is perhaps one of the more disturbing kind of glimpses into their worldview. I mean, am I crazy to say this, or is it fair to say that, like, it's not normal for. It's not. Normal's the wrong word. I don't want to say that it's not like most boys, young boys, teenage boys are not sexually abusing their siblings.
