The Washington Post’s Paul Fahri details how In Touch, a celebrity gossip publication, broke the Duggar family story of sexual molestation and coverup. Solid reportorial work is how, including this bit on the genesis of it:
[Editor David Perel] He won’t name the magazine’s sources, but a woman named Tandra Barnfield apparently was a helpful guide.
Barnfield was contacted by an InTouch reporter, Melissa Roberto, earlier this year after Barnfield posted a photo on Instagram of her kissing her wife, Samantha Muzny, in front of the Duggars’ home near Springdale, Ark. The photo — a protest, Barnfield said, of Michelle Duggar’s role in promoting opposition to an anti-discrimination initiative last year — had gone viral.
During their conversation, Barnfield, who lives in the Houston area but has family in Springdale, told Roberto about the police report. “It wasn’t like it was a rumor to us,” Barnfield said in an interview. “We knew all about it. . . . It wasn’t hard to get it. You just had to know where to look.”
Indeed, in the controversy that’s ensued it’s become clear that MANY people knew about the Duggars’ story, including many of their friends, political allies and fellow churchgoers. They knew because the Duggars told them.
The article notes, too, that In Touch named no victims of molestation. That has come, in large part, thanks to statements from the Duggars themselves.