The Duggar nexus: Huckabee, Gothard and Hobby Lobby. [View all]

[muriel_volestrangler]

From the In Touch article about Josh Duggar:

James said that they found out about a Christian program in Little Rock which they felt more comfortable with. James said that he could not remember the name of the program, but that it was conducted by a Christian ministry in the old Veterans Hospital in Little Rock and the man who ran it was Harold Walker. James said that he thought that the program was affiliated with the Little Rock Police Department since they had a station in the same building. James said that the program consisted of hard physical work and counseling. James said that (Josh) was in the program from March 17, 2003 until July 17, 2003.
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(Interview with Michelle Duggar)
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Det. Hignite then asked Mrs. Duggar about the training center they sent (Josh) to. She said it was not really a training center. Det. Hignite asked if the guy (Josh) talked to was a certified Counselor. She said no. She said it was a guy they know in Little Rock that is remodeling a building. Det. Hignite asked if the guy was more of a mentor. She said kind of.

From 2008:

Evangelist Bill Gothard, whose Institute for Basic Life Principles runs a faith-based prison program out of what's known as the Little Rock Training Center, has been much in the news recently. A young man home-schooled under a rigid Gothard program went on a shooting spree at a Colorado church in December, killing two and blaming Gothard for his crack-up. Later, Gothard and former Gov. Mike Huckabee were seen hobnobbing at a Texas fund-raiser for Huckabee's presidential bid.
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Gothard's presence here can be tracked to his friendship with former Little Rock Mayor Jim Dailey, whose idea it was for Gothard to create a facility in Little Rock to promote faith-based products. Hobby Lobby donated the VA building to Gothard in 2000, and Gothard began renovation of the the 529,717-square-foot building. He said he would use the building as a juvenile center, orphanage for foreign children and base for growing his ministry in Arkansas.
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Dailey said he'd called Gothard to get an update of what was happening with the training center. The training center, which features a huge, but unmanned and quiet, wood-paneled lobby with a maroon carpeting and chairs upholstered in white fabric, employs seven people, director R.T. Spivey said. It serves the chaplains in the IBLP's PAL prison program. At one time, the training center operated the “Integrity Construction Institute” for young men, but that program has moved to Alpena.
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Huckabee's appearance with Gothard in December prompted an item first in a Cincinnati paper that took note of Gothard's “authoritarian” and “controversial” Biblical beliefs, tenets incorporated into Character Training Institute, a Gothard spin-off (and supposedly secular). The CTI sells “City of Character” products that use Biblical principles (scrubbed of Biblical references) to “teach” character, and Dailey once promoted making Little Rock a Character City. The city board of directors declined to buy into the program.

http://www.arktimes.com/arkansas/a-day-shelter-in-the-old-va/Content?oid=865453

I'm trying to track down the "Integrity Construction Institute ("for young men&quot - various outfits are called "Integrity Construction", but the 'for young men' bit, and Michelle Dugar's "remodeling a building" makes it sound like they used 'troubled' young men as free labour for construction projects. And all owned by Bill Gothard, good friend of Mike Huckabee, governor of Arkansas from 1996 to 2007. In a building donated by Hobby Lobby. Gothard resigned from IBLP after this:

Bill Gothard, an Illinois-based advocate for home schooling and conservative dress who warned against rock music and debt, has resigned from the ministry he founded after allegations of sexually harassing women who worked at his ministry and failing to report child abuse cases.

Gothard’s resignation from the Institute in Basic Life Principles, according to a letter sent to families affiliated with the ministry he founded, comes a week after he was put on administrative leave. According to an organizer involved in the whistle-blowing website Recovering Grace, 34 women told the website they had been sexually harassed; four women alleged molestation.

RNS spoke with several women who alleged they were sexual harassed, including one woman who alleged that Gothard molested her when she was 17.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/religion/conservative-leader-bill-gothard-resigns-following-abuse-allegations/2014/03/07/0381aa94-a624-11e3-b865-38b254d92063_story.html

It's no wonder Huckabee is defending the Duggars; he's up to his neck in this. The 'Christian ministry' running the non-counseling program was owned by Gothard, who owned the 'Advanced Training Institute' that the Duggars publicise to homeschoolers, and with which they've been associated for years (one Duggar book mentions they go to a conference for it every year, and recounts a story from one year which the age of one family member ties down to the early 2000s).