Cousins Amy Duggar King and Jill Duggar have been able to lean on one another throughout Joseph Duggar’s arrest scandal.
“Jill and I are really close. I am really thankful for that friendship and that cousinship that we have,” Amy, 39, told reporter Dory Jackson in a Wednesday, May 13, YouTube interview. “It’s not surface-level any longer. She’s such a beautiful person andI love that we can connect on such a deeper level now than we ever have.”
Amy’s mom, Deanna Duggar, is the older sister of Jim Bob Duggar, who shares Jill, 34, Joseph, 31, and 17 other children with his wife, Michelle Duggar.
News broke in March that Joseph was arrested in Arkansas for unlawful sexual activity with a minor after allegations that he molested a 9-year-old child in Florida in 2020. The victim, now 14, claimed in a police statement that the Counting On alum “eventually apologized for his actions” at the time before the incidents stopped. Joseph was subsequently extradited to Florida where he pleaded not guilty and was released on $600,000 bail. (Joseph and his wife, Kendra Duggar, are both also facing four counts of child endangerment, for which they each pleaded not guilty.)
Throughout the legal case, Amy reached out to Jill and vice versa.
“We have definitely sent messages back and forth, all week long, you know, for weeks now of just like, ‘Are you doing OK? I love you,’ [and] ‘We’re here together. We’re gonna get through this,’” Amy recalled of her text thread with Jill. “I think with Jill, at first it was just getting to know each other. We always knew each other, fun and happy and cousins and all that, but we never really talked about heart-deep issues and the things that we might have trouble with or the things that we might struggle with or … trust.”
With time, Amy explained that she and Jill have “both proven” that they can trust each other.
“You know, we’re not going to blab what we’re told and what we talk about,” she said. “And, you know, that’s what makes a friendship so close [or] a cousinship so close is that family really relies on each other.”
Amy added, “It’s not pick and choose. You don’t cherrypick what you believe or what you want to say to someone. You’re going to trust them with everything. And so, you know, Jill trusts me with her boys, [and] I trust her with Dax.”
Jill shares three sons with husband Derick Dillard, while Amy and husband Dillion King are parents of 6-year-old Daxton.
Aside from Jill, Amy is estranged from her uncle Jim Bob, 60, and most of his kids. She previously revealed in March that she last spoke with Joseph and Kendra, 27, “five years ago.”
If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673). If you or someone you know is experiencing child abuse, call or text Child Help Hotline at 1-800-422-4453.
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