Josh Duggar’s Sister on Molestation: ‘It Wasn’t Like a Horror Story’

Although her brother Josh Duggar molested her and three of her sisters when they were younger, Jessa (Duggar) Seewald says “it wasn’t like a horror story.”

“My parents … I can see looking back [that] my parents handled this very well,” Jessa, now 22, said in an exclusive interview with Megyn Kelly on Friday’s The Kelly File on Fox News.

“They sent Josh away,” the expectant mom explained. “They had him get help. When he came back he was a totally different person. He was repentant whenever he left. When he came back, I could see he had made life changes.”

Jessa, who sat alongside her sister, Jill (Duggar) Dillard, for the interview, said that her parents spoke to each of the girls who had been molested.

“My parents took us aside individually and said, ‘Here’s what happened,’ ” said Jessa. “At that point, you’re shocked. I was shocked. I didn’t know. I didn’t understand this is what happened until my parents told me.”

New mom Jill, 24, added, “It was never like you think, ‘This will happen to me.’ To us, it was very mild compared to what happens to some young women.”

“When my parents told me this I was … really, I was sad. I was shocked. But I was sad because this is my older brother, who I love a lot. It’s conflicting.

“I was angry at first, I was like, ’How could this happen?’ ” Jill recalled. “And then, you know, my parents explained to us what happened and then Josh came and asked each of us, individually – I know he asked me to forgive him.

“And I had to make that choice to forgive him, you know? It wasn’t something that somebody forced, like, ‘Oh, you need to do this.’ You have to make that decision for yourself.”

This article originally appeared on People.com