Duggar parents, in Fox interview, say they felt like failures

Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar, stars of the TLC reality show 19 Kids and Counting, said they felt like failures after hearing that when their oldest son, Josh, was a teenager, he was involved in inappropriate conduct with several underage girls, including more than one of his younger sisters.

In a sit-down interview with Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly that aired Wednesday night, the Duggar parents publicly addressed the allegations for the first time since reports surfaced two weeks ago.

Two of the Duggars' daughters - Jessa Seewald and Jill Dillard, who are now in their 20s - briefly appeared in the show's final minutes. "We're victims," one said tearfully.

It was unclear exactly what she was discussing. Michelle Duggar had told Kelly that because of the current media frenzy, the people Josh touched have been "more victimized these last few weeks more than they were 12 years ago."

A fuller interview with Seewald and Dillard is to air Friday night.

In the interview that aired Wednesday, Jim Bob Duggar said Josh, who is now 27, came to him at age 14 and said he had "improperly touched some of our daughters" under their clothes as they slept.

"The girls didn't know," their father said.

"Safeguards" were put in place, but then Josh started to touch the girls in the living room, he said. On two occasions, the girls were awake, Michelle Duggar said.

"He was still a kid," Jim Bob Duggar said of his son. "This was not rape or anything like that."

The last incidence of touching was with a sister younger than 10, the father said. "At that point," he said, "we pulled him out the house and said, 'You can't be here.' "

Kelly asked the couple whether they were a worried their son would be labeled a pedophile.

They responded that the label would be incorrect: Josh was not a pedophile because he was not an adult when the incidents happened, they said.

"He's a child preying on a child," Jim Bob Duggar said.

Believing that their son should confess to a police officer, his parents took him to Arkansas State Police headquarters, and Josh "shared everything" with an officer, who in turn gave the boy a stern talk, the couple said.

Kelly said that officer has since been convicted of child pornography charges and is incarcerated.

"We had no idea" that the officer was involved in anything wrong, Jim Bob Duggar replied.