Duggar Family Throws Party For Convicted Rapist
The Duggar family recently threw a party that Counting On fans probably won’t get to see on TV.
The Duggar family spends a lot of time planning parties, and these events are often filmed for their TLC reality series. A recent engagement celebration that the Duggars hosted for a close family friend was similar to other parties that Counting On fans have watched the family plan. However, a shocking secret about the event has been revealed: The Duggar family partied with a convicted rapist.
The Duggar family’s live-in tutor, Tabitha Paine, recently got engaged to Timothy Robertson, the owner of a home remodeling business. The photo below was taken during the couple’s engagement party, which was held at the Duggar family’s home in Arkansas.
According to legal documents obtained by In Touch Weekly, Tabitha Paine’s fiance was once convicted of anally penetrating a female roommate without her consent. The incident took place in late 1999, and Timothy Robertson later pled guilty to criminal sexual conduct in the third degree.
“Such sexual battery was accomplished under the following circumstances: that the Defendant did enter the bedroom of the Victim while she was laying face down on her bed, laid on top of her, remove her pants and forced his penis into her anus,” one court document reads.
However, Robertson never spent time in prison for his crime. A judge suspended his three-year prison sentence, and he was given just one year of probation instead. He was pardoned in 2008 and taken off the sex offender registry.
Robertson now tells In Touch that he was “falsely accused” of rape, and the Daily Mail reports that he recently shared his side of the story on Facebook. He alleges that he and his roommate were having consensual sex and that her boyfriend caught them in the act.
“He wondered what was going on so I was accused of assaulting this young lady,” Robertson wrote in the now-deleted post.
Robertson claims that he took a plea bargain because he wanted to avoid jail time, and he believes that he was later pardoned because he had stopped partying and getting drunk and started praying. Tabitha Paine responded to her future husband’s Facebook “testimony” with a supportive message about his “open, sincere heart,” so she was seemingly aware of his past behavior before In Touch published its story. However, it’s unclear whether the Duggar family knew about it before they threw an engagement party for him.
“[My past] has been cleaned,” Robertson told In Touch.
“I love my fiancée. And I think the Duggars are a fabulous family. That’s all I need to put out there.”
In 2015, Tabitha Paine began popping up in many of the Duggar family’s social media photos. This lead to speculation that the 31-year-old was courting 27-year-old John-David Duggar. However, as the Inquisitr previously reported, Paine shot these rumors down and explained that the Duggar family had hired her as a live-in tutor. The Duggar children are all homeschooled, and Michelle Duggar used to rely on her older daughters’ help teaching the younger kids. Michelle likely hired Tabitha because some of her unpaid helpers got married and moved out.
Tabitha Paine is the sister-in-law of Bringing Up Bates star Erin Paine, and she’s the oldest of 10 children. She knows the Duggars through the Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP), an ultraconservative Christian organization. The Duggars are followers of the controversial ministry, and Tabitha Paine’s father, Dr. Stephen Paine, is on the IBLP board of directors.
According to Chicago magazine, a group of former IBLP members filed a lawsuit against the organization in 2015. They accused the organization’s founder and former president, Bill Gothard, of sexual misconduct and abuse, and they alleged that the men on the board of directors, including Tabitha Paine’s father, were helping him cover up his behavior.
The Duggar family held Gothard in very high regard before the sexual misconduct allegations forced him to resign as IBLP president. When a teenage Josh Duggar began repeatedly molesting his younger siblings over a decade ago, Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar consulted Gothard. He instructed the parents to send their troubled son to the IBLP training center in Little Rock, Arkansas. Gothard claimed that Josh left the program with “a whole new respect for young ladies,” but the former 19 Kids and Counting star would later prove Gothard wrong by cheating on his wife, Anna Duggar.
The Duggar family publicly forgave Josh for all of his sexual sins, so perhaps fans shouldn’t be too surprised that the Counting On stars were willing to throw a party for a man convicted of rape.
[Featured Image by Duggar Family/Facebook]
