Ex-reality star Josh Duggar moved to Dallas-area prison for child pornography sentence

Former reality television star Josh Duggar, who was convicted in May of receiving child pornography, has been moved to a federal detention center in Dallas County.

Duggar was one of the star’s of TLC’s “19 Kids and Counting,” which followed the large family’s life in Arkansas.

The show was canceled after news surfaced in 2015 that Duggar had been accused of molesting four of his sisters and a babysitter. (Authorities had determined that the statute of limitations had passed for those accusations.)

Then, in April 2021, Duggar was arrested in Arkansas after investigators traced child pornography files, including pornography of children as young as toddlers, to Duggar’s computer.

In May, according to federal court documents, U.S. District Judge Timothy Brooks sentenced Duggar to 151 months — or about 12 1/2 years — in prison for the child pornography charges. That’s less than the maximum 20-year sentence that the charges could have held, but significantly more than the 60-month sentence that Duggar requested, according to court filings.

According to the court’s sentencing document, Duggar is also required to participate in a “sex offense-specific treatment program.”

The Associated Press reported that federal prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memo that Duggar’s past behavior, “when viewed alongside the conduct for which he has been convicted, makes clear that Duggar has a deep-seated, pervasive, and violent sexual interest in children, and a willingness to act on that interest.”

Duggar has appealed his case, according to federal court documents.

When Duggar was sentenced, the court recommended that he be assigned to a federal facility in either Seagoville, Texas, or Texarkana, Arkansas, according to court documents.

Duggar has now been transferred to FCI Seagoville, a federal detention center in Dallas County. The Federal Bureau of Prisons’ website on Tuesday listed Duggar as an inmate at the facility.

FCI Seagoville is a “low-security federal correctional institution,” according to the BoP’s website. The facility, which has about 1,750 inmates, is about half an hour southeast of downtown Dallas.

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.