"I acted inexcusably," twenty-seven-year old Josh Duggar spoke out about an unsealed police report that indicates him in the molestation of young girls, some of whom lived in his home. The crimes, committed when Duggar was a teen, were never reported to civil authorities and instead dealt with through the Duggars and their church. As a result, Josh Duggar was never prosecuted. The Christian community will undoubtedly have a varied reaction as this story continues to develop.   

Some popular Christian writers have seemed to infer that the Duggar's particularly patriarchal emphasis on Christianity is the root cause of the sexual abuse. One was Sarah Bessey, author of Jesus Feminist. Bessey said on her Twitter, "Patriarchy was never God's dream for humanity. And the heartbreaking consequences of that system cut a swath of destruction across lives." 

Best-selling author of Searching for Sunday, Rachel Held Evans, took the scandal as an opportunity to address the problem of reporting sexual crimes to the church for discipline instead of to government authorities. She tweeted, "Abuse *must* be reported to civil authorities, not simply church authorities."

One person that is standing by the Duggars is their longtime friend, politician and television personality Mike Huckabee. In a Facebook post, Huckabee declared that the media was "bloodthirsty" and more at fault than Josh Duggar himself, stating, "No purpose whatsoever is served by those who are now trying to discredit Josh or his family by sensationalizing the story. Good people make mistakes and do regrettable and even disgusting things."

Josh's personal Instagram page has been swarmed with support from fans of the television show and the Duggar family. His latest photo has over 40,000 "likes", despite being released during the firestorm of negative attention. 

Complicating matters further is the fact that the Duggars have long been seen as enemies of the homosexual community. Their comments on homosexual marriage laws are now being interpreted as ironic, considering that there was a presence of perversion and sex crimes apparently under their own roof. Over 39,000 tweets addressing the Duggar scandal had been published on social media as of this writing.

From the looks of it, the backlash from this scandal is just beginning.