This Is The Only Fact That Matters About The Duggar Family Scandal

The Internet does two things really well: efficiently deliver listsicles to a large audience and give people an easy way to render their opinions about how other people should feel. For instance, I love Twitter, but every day seems to bring some new hot topic event that inspires unwanted opinions from around the globe. People have no problem offering up their thoughts about how some random celebrity should react to a personal tragedy and/or whether they should be offended by some tweet that probably didn't mean much of anything. We want to make sense of the world and put stories in context. It's human nature to have an opinion on just about every topic and the Internet provides a seamless way to get those opinions out into the world.

But the flipside of that access is that it's easy to lose your perspective on what really matters in a story. It's so easy to get caught up in conventional wisdom and snarkiness and self-righteous indignation that we lose sight of what is important. We forget to ask ourselves the only question that matters: how would I want this story to play out if this was an anonymous stranger?

It's easy to get caught up in the sordid details of the Josh Duggar sexual allegations, especially if you didn't much care for the family of their TV show 19 KIDS AND COUNTING. In a perplexing interview with Fox News Channel host Megyn Kelly on Wednesday, parents Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar speculated that their family was being targeted because of their Christian values.

Aside from the fact that the Duggars aren't exactly mainstream Christians, I don't think it's accurate to say that the family has been targeted or that their beliefs are what put this story into the public arena. It's more likely to be the result of a Frankenstein-like mash-up of jealousy over tabloid magazine exclusives, the natural buzz that comes from any scandal involving a "celebrity" and a bit of self-righteous snickering from people who didn't think much of the Duggar Family even before this scandal.

But no matter what you think of the Duggars or their television show, what really matters in any sexual abuse case are the victims. More than justice, more than revenge, more than snarky hot takes on people who don't like. In an ideal world, we don't bring more harm to victims who are likely already struggling with personal traumas. And yet, all of us were all too willing to ignore the desires of the victims in this case because we wanted to know every last sordid detail about the Duggar Family. We knew that they were hiding something and at some point it didn't even matter what they were hoping to keep secret. The only way our feelings about the family were going to seem justified is if every last flaw was publicized, even if it wasn't what the victims wanted.

Younger sisters Jill and Jessa Duggar were two of Josh Duggar's victims and it's pretty clear that they didn't want that fact to become public knowledge. At least one of the victims (it's not clear who) asked a judge to destroy the police report because the redacted version would make it easy for someone to identify them. They didn't want to be "outed" and yet we were willing to do that because it made for a better story. Because Josh Duggar being sexually inappropriate with his sisters makes the family even less sympathetic and believable.

Yet it still gets back to the victims. They didn't want to be identified. And it doesn't matter why that was the case. You can argue that it's all some Duggar Family conspiracy or that the sisters still don't fully comprehend what happened to them. And maybe that's the case but it still doesn't matter. Victims of molestation - especially when it happens to someone so young - deserve a bit of privacy. Identifying the sisters as victims didn't serve the purposes of justice and it didn't make the allegations any more horrific. What it did do was make the story more clickable and sordid and too often we serve that master without considering the consequences.

In fact, not naming victims of sexual abuse unless they are willing to be named is the policy of a number of organizations, including the National Alliance To End Sexual Violence:

The NAESV urges members of the news media to adopt the following policy on publishing the names of persons who come forward with a change of rape or sexual assault:

It is the policy of this news organization not to publish the names of minors who come forward with allegations of sexual abuse or rape and to avoid reporting stories in such a way that these minors are identifiable. Barring extraordinary circumstances, it is also the policy of this news organization not to publish the names of adults who come forward with allegations of sexual abuse or rape unless those individuals are willing to be named in the media. Members of this news organization will report these stories with sensitivity toward the stigma associated with being publicly named.

Realistically, there's no way that the victims in the case wouldn't have been identified in public. But news organizations could have been a bit more restrained in their coverage and considered how they would have handled this case if the victims weren't part of some "celebrity" family. If news surfaced that a random 27-year-old has confessed to sexual misconduct involving minors, would the press reveal the names victims against their wishes?

It's easy to be cynical about the motivations of the Duggar Family, particularly after Wednesday night's unsettling Fox News Channel interview. But aside your distaste of the Duggars for a moment and ask yourself if the best interests of the victims were served in the coverage of this story. Maybe the sisters are deluding themselves or maybe they are just under the psychological thumbs of their parents. But is that the public's call to make? Shouldn't we be making some vague effort to protect their wishes?

Yes, the Duggar Family hasn't handled this story very well. But once you think about it, neither have any of us.