FAYETTEVILLE -- Four daughters of the Jim Bob Duggar family have sued local officials, claiming that they improperly released police documents to a tabloid that published the information and identified the girls as victims of sexual abuse at the hands of their brother Josh.
The lawsuit was filed Thursday in federal court in Fayetteville. The daughters are Jill Dillard, Jessa Seewald, Jinger Vuolo and Joy Duggar.
Defendants include Washington County, the city of Springdale, former Springdale Police Chief Kathy O'Kelley, Springdale City Attorney Ernest Cate, Maj. Rick Hoyt with the Washington County sheriff's office, former Washington County Attorney Steve Zega and Bauer Media Group, which publishes In Touch Weekly magazine and related social media sites. The lawsuit also lists 10 unidentified "Doe" defendants, believed to be employees of the defendants.
Claims include invasion of privacy, outrage and violation of the right to due process. The lawsuit seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages to be determined at trial.
Springdale officials released a response through Harrington & Miller, their lawyers, on behalf of O'Kelley and Cate calling the lawsuit "unfortunate," "misguided," "without merit" and "false." The statement says Springdale prevailed in a previous legal action regarding release of the information.
"As we stated nearly two years ago, the city takes seriously its responsibilities to the public under the FOIA as well as its obligation to protect the privacy of the victims," the statement read. "With this obligation, the city made the family aware of the Freedom of Information Act request for the police report and kept the family regularly informed of the status of the request prior to the production of the redacted report."
[DOCUMENT: Read full lawsuit filed by Duggar sisters]
Zega declined to comment on pending litigation and sheriff's office officials referred all questions to County Attorney Brian Lester. Late Friday, Lester said he had not yet seen the lawsuit and could not offer any comment.
The suit says officials released documents to the magazine under a Freedom of Information Act request in violation of state laws that prohibit the release of such information in order to protect children and victims of sexual abuse. In Touch published the information -- despite a judge's order to seal the documents -- for financial gain and to embarrass the Duggars, according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit contends that police investigated allegations of sexual abuse against Josh Duggar in 2006, related to incidents in 2002 and 2003, but no charges were filed. However, a Family in Need of Services petition was filed in Washington County Juvenile Court. The girls were minors at the time of the allegations.
[DOCUMENT: Read the city of Springdale's full statement on the Duggar lawsuit]
The lawsuit contends that police assured the family that information from the investigation and their interviews would be available only to law enforcement, juvenile court and child-services personnel.
In Touch requested documents related to the investigation 10 years later to exploit the sisters' experiences as victims of child molestation for the magazine's financial gain, the suit contends.
O'Kelley, then Springdale police chief, and Cate improperly decided that the case report should be released to the public, according to the lawsuit. It says that O'Kelley and Cate supervised the Police Department's redaction and release of the report in violation of the Arkansas juvenile code, the Arkansas code, and the Arkansas and United States constitutions.
[PHOTOS: Josh Duggar through the years]
The Duggars were stars of the TLC cable channel show 19 Kids and Counting, which drew 3.6 million viewers as recently as May 2015. Reruns of the show were halted after In Touch magazine released an article May 21, 2015, that the family's oldest child, Josh Duggar, had been the subject of a Springdale police investigation into whether he fondled young girls in his home. TLC later canceled the show.
Josh Duggar, then 14, revealed in March 2002 to his parents that he had run his hands over young girls in the family home as they slept, the parents said in an interview aired June 3, 2015, by Fox News. The parents told the girls, disciplined their son and took precautions, but they didn't seek outside assistance, Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar said in the interview.
The fact that Josh Duggar confessed before anyone found out about the behavior and showed remorse gave them hope that he would change his ways, the Duggars said in the interview.
Josh Duggar admitted in July 2002 that he took similar advantage of girls who had fallen asleep on the family couch, they said, and made a third admission in March 2003 that he touched two girls while they were awake. By then, five girls -- including four sisters and a houseguest -- had been fondled, the parents said.
The Duggar parents took Josh Duggar to report what he had done to an Arkansas State Police patrolman, according to the Springdale police report. The corporal did not report the matter to the state's child-abuse hotline as required by law.
Springdale police did not learn of the incident until someone anonymously called the abuse hotline in 2006. By then, the statute of limitations had run out on any applicable criminal charges. By that time, Josh Duggar was no longer a minor. Springdale police were advised when the magazine filed the Freedom of Information Act request that the protections afforded to juvenile offenders no longer applied.
The lawsuit says Hoyt and Zega similarly released an unredacted police incident report that allowed the public to identify each of the victims.
The reports formed the basis for In Touch stories, according to the lawsuit. Josh Duggar resigned as a lobbyist for a group run by the conservative Family Research Council and acknowledged wrongdoing in a public statement May 21, 2015.
"Plaintiffs endured harsh and unwarranted public scrutiny," the lawsuit says. "Defendants' actions forced plaintiffs to relive painful memories and experiences that occurred almost ten years prior, resulting in plaintiffs suffering severe mental anguish and distress."
The lawsuit says the girls had a reasonable expectation that statements they made to law enforcement officials would remain private. As underage victims of sexual abuse, they also had a reasonable expectation that their identities and the specific details of the abuse would remain private, according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit also says O'Kelley was friends with an attorney who worked at the same firm as the attorney who requested the documents on behalf of In Touch.
"The steady leaking of information encouraged and reinforced the [Springdale Police] department's sense of urgency to release the lurid details of plaintiffs' abuse to the media," according to the lawsuit. "The increase in media requests caused defendant O'Kelley to contemplate whether the police department would soon end up in the tabloids, creating the prospect of worldwide media attention for what was otherwise a sleepy, small-town police department."
"Of course, it was precisely the identity of the victims that would invite such public scrutiny upon Springdale," the lawsuit says. "A response to the FOIA request that did not include the victims' identifying details, or the lurid minutiae of their ordeal, would not have attracted the desired public attention."
The documents included Jim Bob and Michelle Duggars' names, the family's current and former addresses, and personal details about each girl, according to the lawsuit. It says the information was rushed out without seeking outside advice regarding the disclosure of confidential sexual abuse information obtained from a minor.
The lawsuit says Cate asked Arkansas Municipal League attorneys after the fact whether the information was subject to disclosure and was told that disclosure of the identities of victims of sex crimes is exempt from the Freedom of Information Act.
Washington County Circuit Judge Stacey Zimmerman, who presides over juvenile court, ordered all copies of the investigation reports destroyed and issued orders that the reports were confidential and not subject to Freedom of Information Act disclosure. In Touch responded with more stories and continued using the information, according to the lawsuit.
The suit asks a judge to order In Touch to hand over profits it made by commercially exploiting the situation and to order the tabloid to stop publishing the identifying information.
The Duggars are represented by a Los Angeles law firm, Larson O'Brien. Local counsels are Shawn Daniels and Sarah Jewell.
State Desk on 05/20/2017