Yesterday I posted painfully after much professional self deliberation on one segment about the evolving soap opera of “America’s Family,” the Duggars, the TLC channel tv family with “19 and Counting,” children. This show had been on for years and as it turned out was too  good to be true. It emerged earlier this year that the eldest son who molested young girls outside the family and as a teen had incested reportedly two of his own sisters. The family concealed all this from the TLC folks and just about everyone else. They referred the lad for “treatment” {and truly I use that term very loosely and with the greatest of reservations] to a friend of the family, a law enforcement person who put him to work for three months, had no mental health experience and as far as is known this lad received no real counseling, and was not reported as sex offender which the media seems to have forgotten would have been the legally mandated duty of this officer. The family waited until the statute of limitations was expired for such a crime of an adolescent, then the story started to emerge when the son was the front man for a Christian morals advocacy organization and his escapes even as an adult were emerging.

My post yesterday concerned the restricted topic that this was all so typical of what is called in family therapy circles, a “closed family system.” I will not repeat those ideas in this post.

Yesterday, a very credible and fair handed Christian-based homeschooling organization broke yet another story about Josh Duggar, entitled, “JOSH DUGGAR CHECKS INTO TREATMENT CENTER AFTER PORN STAR DETAILS “VERY TRAUMATIC” AND “TERRIFYING” SEXUAL ENCOUNTER.” The publication, which I as a Jew, long interested in home schooling, is Homeschooling  Anonymous. This publication deserves much credit for its reporting which is independent, does not mindlessly mouth faith-based nostrums and simplistic views and solutions. It has had the bravery to take on tough issues in its world and very even-handedly, citing criticisms usually not seen in such publications, from the (shudder) “secular” world. This article does so even more impressively. It has not repeated this incredibly ill-thought and supremely hypocritical defenses of far right Christian circles’ leaders who have rushed to Duggar’s defense and the sordid story of secretiveness and in a sense flagrant dishonesty of the family. One figure stated some weeks ago that he felt the girls molested had suffered far more from the media than from the sexual predatory assault experiences. These kinds of statements boggle the mind and set off expectable national outrage themselves. Ignorance personified that we still see all too often in the world of treatment of sexual abuse.

What I wish to leave the reader with is to follow along this unbelievably sordid tale, and follow the undoubtedly public saga of this man’s foray into treatment and make a judgment whether he receives decent and thoroughgoing sex  offender treatment that is long overdue. I would recommend that the interested reader, actually read the above article that I have linked to Homeschoolers Anonymous, and to follow the purported-attributed site of the treatment center he has reportedly entered, read through its website and form impressions of this type of treatment which if I would offer one perhaps biasing view that this treatment center’s philosophy sounds very ideological.

Then perhaps travel to well known RTCs [residential treatment centers} such as Hazeldon or my unabashed favorite Sierra Tucson in Arizona.

I hope that he examines himself in the most cruel, self-harsh, hold nothing back, don’t hide behind nostrums, cozy mottos and easy parrotted external formulas that people in the media in the last 10 years or so, utilize to briefly retreat very publicly into an RTC with great fanfare, then emerge not too much later and declare themselves “cured” and live a new style of defensive hypocrisy.

Treatment, I tell my  patients, is “the hardest thing  you will ever do in your life.” One must examine oneself without censoring, holding back or prevaricating, dissimulating, sugar coating and “come clean.” It is lifelong work. My definition of a functioning healthy adult is a “person who works with their stuff,” an alcoholic who learns accepts and deals with the fact that his addictions cost him his job, family, standing, everything and then goes on to deal with that openly and forever learn from and truly change and not ever repeat that part of their lives, while also no concealing it.

Many people, former famous addicts seem to have done this, one of the best current examples, is the actor Robert Downey who a decade ago was dumpster diving because he had sunk so low in his cocaine and other addictions. One person who appears not to have done so yet, and has publicly flouted and resisted treatment for a few years, defying even a judge who saw her in court numerous times for her nationally public alcoholism, is/was LindsayLohan who I thought was an incredible child actress in her day and now has essentially thrown away her career. Former Rep. Patrick Kennedy comes to  mind as a relapsing addict several year ago who it appears has truly turned his life around with hard self work in treatment.

Now we will await the fruits of Josh Duggar’s labors in treatment with himself and pray that he makes a truthful lifelong effort to gain mastery over his profound sex addiction.