Amy Duggar King revealed that she reached out to her cousin Josh Duggar‘s wife, Anna Duggar, amid the family’s legal drama.
“With Anna, I have tried. I have sent text messages, I have sent emails. I’ve tried, I’ve tried,” King, 36, told People in an interview published on Monday, June 5. “I don’t know if her phone’s being monitored. I don’t know if she’s turned it off [and] she’s gotten a new one. I’ve tried on Instagram, I’ve tried on Twitter. She wants nothing to do with it at all, and that’s her decision.”
King went on to say that she and her husband, Dillon, offered Anna, 34, a place to stay with her children after Josh, 35, was arrested in April 2021, but she’s never gotten a response. “I offered it, and that’s really all I can do is just hope and pray that she opens her eyes. That’s all you can do,” King explained, noting that she has not reached out to Josh. “Honestly, it sucks. It just sucks because I want to be there and I want to help, and it doesn’t have to involve cameras or fame or anything. It’s just family reaching out to family. Unfortunately, she doesn’t see it.”
Josh was sentenced to 151 months in prison in May 2022 following his December 2021 conviction on one count of receiving and possessing child pornography. In March, his sentence was extended by nearly two months, meaning he’ll now be released in October 2032.
The former TLC personality’s wife, Anna, has stayed relatively quiet since Josh began serving out his sentence FCI Seagoville in Texas. Ahead of Josh’s sentencing, Anna wrote a letter to the judge asking for a lighter sentence, calling her husband a “loving, supportive and caring father.”
Anna and the 19 Kids and Counting alum are the parents of seven children: Mackynzie, 13, Michael, 11, Marcus, 10, Meredith, 7, Mason, 5, Maryella, 3, and Madyson, 19 months.
King has previously been outspoken about her famous family, saying in May 2022 that she believes Josh deserves a harsher sentence than he got. “Twelve and a half years isn’t enough,” she said in a statement after his sentencing. “But I hope that every single second he’s there feels like an eternity.”
The Arkansas native participated in the new Amazon Prime docuseries Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets, which debuted on Friday, June 2, and chronicles the family’s scandals and the controversy surrounding their religious beliefs. Ahead of the show’s release, Josh’s parents, Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar, slammed the “sad” series, which also stars their daughter Jill Duggar.
“Like other families, ours too has experienced the joys and heartbreaks of life, just in a very public format,” the pair wrote in a statement shared via their website on Thursday, June 1. “This ‘documentary’ paints so much and so many in a derogatory and sensationalized way because sadly that’s the direction of entertainment these days.”
