Josh Duggar, he of the Christian fundamentalist worldview and secret Ashley Madison account, is facing a lawsuit after allegedly “manhandling” a porn actress during two instances of consensual sex. The actress, Danica Dillon, is asking for $500,000 in damages, asserting that Duggar caused her physical and emotional trauma.
Dillon says she was dancing at a Philadelphia strip joint, the Gold Club, in March, when Duggar paid her $600 for lap dances. He allegedly asked her back to his hotel room, where they decided to have sex and he paid her another $1,500 for her “company.”
“I tried to be sexy and seductive,” Dillon told ET in September. “And then he was like, ‘No, let’s get straight to the point,’ and [we] took our clothes off, took his clothes off, and he was very rough with me. … He threw me on the bed and, in all honesty, though it was consensual, it more or less felt like I was being raped.” She says Duggar made her perform oral sex. “I never told him no, but I did push him back and push him off and say that’s too rough, that’s too rough.” The next month, Dillon alleges, Duggar found her dancing at another strip club and claimed he wanted to apologize, but she says he assaulted her again when they had sex a second time.
Duggar cost his family its reality show in May after admitting that he’d molested multiple underage girls, including four of his sisters, when he was a teenager. That revelation, coupled with the Ashley Madison revelations, led him to hide out in August at an Illinois rehab center, where he’s still getting treatment for “porn addiction.” Porn addiction, as Amanda Marcotte points out, is a handy way for Christian leaders to turn sexual desires into a treatable disease on which to blame their bad behavior without taking responsibility for their own hypocrisy.
Duggar was raised on fundamentalist Christian teachings that denigrate sinners such as gay people, women who wear revealing clothing, and sex workers. The facility that “treated” Duggar in his teens after he molested his sisters—the Institute in Basic Life Principles, which is now facing a lawsuit for allegedly covering up sex abuse—has advised survivors of sexual abuse that God might have let their abuse happen because they were dressed immodestly or disobeying their parents.
“Everything he had to do was like he had to be in control and had to be in power,” Dillon told ET of her second sexual interaction with Duggar. That’s exactly how the school of thought Duggar was raised in teaches men to behave around women. #NotAllMen exposed to this radical patriarchal philosophy will grow up to abuse women, but it’s hardly surprising when they do.
