Not a dry eye in the room. In a new preview clip for the upcoming TLC special Jill & Jessa: Counting On, the Duggar siblings get emotional as they recount the trying year their family has been through, due in large part to eldest sibling Josh’s cheating scandal and subsequent rehab stay.
“Everyone makes their own decisions and makes their own choices, but they’re not the only ones who suffer the consequences,” Jill, 24, says during a confessional.
Adds Jessa, 23, “People are all like, ‘Y’all aren’t perfect?’ [But] we never claimed to be perfect … There’s tough days, but even in this I think there is healing.”
Fellow Duggars Jinger and Jana also make appearances in the clip, crying over their brother’s wrongdoing, and Joseph verbalizes what all of the siblings likely feel.
“I don’t think that there’s any way that any of us would have known that my brother was living such a secret life,” the 20-year-old college student says.
The siblings will open up about their older brother Josh’s headline-making cheating scandal in the three-part special, as well as his coming forward about molesting five young girls earlier this year. (The family’s hit reality show, 19 Kids and Counting, was canceled in the wake of Josh’s confession.)
In May, news broke that both Jill and Jessa were victims in the 27-year-old’s molestation scandal — and both girls defended their brother in a tell-all interview with Fox News’ Megyn Kelly.
An emotional Jill revealed in an earlier preview clip from Counting On that Josh should have never allowed them to do the interview knowing full well that he was hiding yet another secret: his unfaithfulness to wife Anna.
“It wasn’t right for him to let us speak our words without having full knowledge of what he was hiding,” Jill said.
In August, it was revealed that Josh was among millions of individuals who had used the infidelity website Ashley Madison to find women to have affairs with.
He confessed to cheating just two days later, adding that he had an addiction to pornography and calling himself “the biggest hypocrite ever.”
“I am so ashamed of the double life that I have been living and am grieved for the hurt, pain and disgrace my sin has caused my wife and family, and most of all Jesus and all those who profess faith in Him,” he wrote in a statement.
On Wednesday, Dec. 9, Good Morning America premiered a clip of his wife Anna, 27, speaking for the first time about how she reacted to the bombshell news.
“I was just like, ‘I’m gonna wake up and this is going to be okay,’” she said. “And this, really, this can’t be true.”
Anna and Josh share four young children together.
Part I of Jill & Jessa: Counting On airs Sunday, Dec. 13, at 8 p.m. ET on TLC.
