Former IBLP member Emily Elizabeth Anderson shares within the collection that she was Jane Doe III, as she most popular to be recognized when she and 9 different girls sued Gothard in 2016, alleging sexual abuse and harassment.
She recollects Gothard inviting her when she was 14 to stop homeschool and go stay at IBLP’s Chicago headquarters “indefinitely.” He informed her that her father did not love her anymore and “had misplaced all authority over her,” she alleges, so Gothard “could be her new authority.”
Elizabeth describes a night the place Gothard introduced her as much as his workplace and was visibly startled to see a male assistant nonetheless working, assuming they have been going to be alone.
Gothard resigned from the IBLP board in March 2014 amid an outdoor authorized counsel investigation into sexual misconduct allegations that in the end decided he acted in an “inappropriate,” if not prison, method. When IBLP shared the investigation’s findings in June 2014, Gothard stated in a later-deleted assertion, “My actions of holding of fingers, hugs, and touching of ft or hair with younger women crossed the boundaries of discretion and have been fallacious.”
The now 88-year-old didn’t return E!’s request for remark and declined to remark for the collection. He has beforehand denied allegations of sexual misconduct.
The plaintiffs dropped their lawsuit in 2018 however informed Recovering Grace (an internet assist neighborhood for alums of IBLP and its homeschool curriculum, the Superior Coaching Institute) that they have been “not recanting” their allegations “or dismissing the incalculable harm that we consider Gothard has achieved by his actions and sure teachings.”
Explaining on the present why they stopped pursuing Gothard in courtroom, along with statutes of limitations and the monetary burden, Elizabeth says, “It is continually rehashing probably the most horrific recollections of your life and telling them many times. In the event you determine to maneuver ahead in a case it is also vital that you simply notice the emotional toll that it should proceed to tackle you. Fairly frankly, the associated fee was too excessive.”
Jinger Duggar, who detailed her break from IBLP in her 2023 memoir, was the one member of her household to seemingly remark in response to Gothard’s authorized points. She tweeted in 2018 that, whereas she was a Christian, “I’ve to be sincere, and true to myself by tweeting this. I don’t assist Invoice Gothard and the Institute of Biblical [sic] Life Ideas in any means, form, or kind. I discover his ‘teachings’ extraordinarily questionable.”