Jinger Duggar Is “Traumatized” by ‘Counting On’

The Big Picture

• Jinger Duggar revealed a traumatizing horseback incident from her time on
  19 Kids and Counting
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• The Duggar family’s strict upbringing under Jim Bob Duggar and the controversial Institute in Basic Life Principles.
• The scandal involving Bill Gothard and Josh Duggar led to the cancelation of the family’s reality TV shows.

The Duggars were a cultural phenomenon in the early days of their TLC reality series19 Kids and Counting. The family rose to fame on the network as a strictly conservative Christian family under the umbrella of the authority of their father, Jim Bob Duggar, who followed the fundamentalist beliefs of a sect known as the Institute in Basic Life Principles. In her book, Becoming Free Indeed, daughter Jinger Duggar wrote about her experiences being raised with the controversial principles the sect promoted, saying that now, as an adult, she realized that some of what she had been taught was “hurtful and untrue,” concluding: “I knew I needed to speak publicly about this because I promoted teachings that I now believe are damaging.”

The church has come under fire for the shocking abuse of power shown by Bill Gothard, the founder, when multiple women came forward to accuse him of sexual abuse. While the lawsuit was eventually dropped and the church’s investigation deemed his behavior “inappropriate” rather than illegal, in her book Jinger compared the church leader to her brother, Josh Duggar, who is currently serving time in prison for child pornography charges. The scandal that emerged surrounding Josh’s confession that he had forcibly touched underage girls, including his younger sisters, Jill Duggar and Jessa Duggar, was a significant factor for the cancelation of 19 Kids and Counting and the spin-off series Counting On.

What “Traumatized” Jinger Duggar on ’19 Kids’?

Jinger recently opened up about an experience she had while filming the pilot for 19 Kids and Counting in a YouTube video she posted on Wednesday, August 07, from a series where she speaks about her experience with reality TV, titled Growing up on TV. In the video, Jinger and her husband, Jeremy Vuolo, had a conversation about what would be the “wildest” thing she could remember happening to her while filming. She described a time when her parents took her to a ranch in a city in New Mexico called Truth or Consequences, and the excitement all of her siblings had at the idea of getting to ride horses for several days during their stay at the ranch. But Jinger was not prepared for what happened on a trail ride one day.

She described how she was put on a horse named Samson, and was told he was calm and would go slow. However, apparently the horse had an aversion to water, because when they came across a wide creek, Jinger’s horse suddenly bolted over the body of water, and began bucking wildly on the other side. Jinger described how the incident shook her up, and then the conversation turned to her deep-seated fear of heights. Jeremy wondered how the series could have neglected to use the dramatic footage in the series, and Jinger joked they might have refrained from using the footage “because I was, like, traumatized” and the producers were “trying to be nice.” Although she then remarked that footage of a terrorized child on a wild ride would usually make for great reality TV. Perhaps her husband’s observation that she could have been seriously injured in the incident had more to do with the network’s decision not to air the footage they had captured.

All episodes of Counting On can be streamed on Discovery+

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