Jessa and Jill Duggar, two of Joshua Duggar’s victims of molestation, spent about a half hour on Fox News suggesting that their brother’s “very mild” touching was “a thousand times” less awful than having it reported in the media. 

Jessa, the younger of the two sisters who have admitted being their brother's molestation victims, deliberately played down what happened.  “In Josh’s case, he was a boy, a young boy in puberty, and a little too curious about girls. And that got him into some trouble. …Really, the extent of it was mild, inappropriate touching.”

Sister Jill added that it was “very mild compared to what happens to some young women.”

After Joshua was sent away and came back, Jessa said she could “just see” that Joshua had “made some life changes” and was “never going to go down that path” again.

So, no biggie until it all made media headlines. Suddenly, the daughters were victims being re-victimized.

Jill said, “Whenever I heard the police report had released, then I said, ‘What? How do they have a right to do this? We’re victims!' They can’t do this to us!”

Jessa said the system “greatly failed” by releasing the police report about Joshua Duggar’s behavior and made de facto identifications of his victims.

“They’re not protecting us here,” Jill said.

“There’s obviously some hokey-pokey going on there,” Jessa added, apparently meaning hanky-panky. She later said she thought people who don’t like her family have been the ones to “spread this around” and “maliciously do so, slanderously do so.” They “definitely didn’t have the victims in mind.”

“There may be an agenda,” Jill agreed. “I see it as a re-victimization that’s even a thousand times worse. …This was something that was already dealt with. We’ve already forgiven Josh. We’ve already moved on.” She said, “Our story was not being told” and that it “shouldn’t have been told.”

Jessa said she felt that people who don’t like the family are the ones to “spread this around,” and “maliciously do so, slanderously do so.” They “definitely didn’t have the victims in mind.” She now said it had been “difficult to walk through” the original experience. “But I’d definitely say that these past two weeks have been a thousand times worse for us.”

Coincidentally, Fox’s Megyn Kelly was there to help with that meme. She had already been pushing it before the interview. But as if we hadn’t already gotten the message, she said to the Duggar sisters, at the beginning of Part 3:

KELLY: We’ve seen so many in this country stand up on behalf of child victims. We’ve seen very little of that in - with respect to your case and your privacy rights and the violation of those promises that your record and your testimony would be sealed. Do you think it has something to do with who you are, who the Duggars are, what your family stands for?

But here’s the problem with this tack, besides the fact that downplaying incest and molestation is a bit hard to swallow: This scandal is not about the salacious details of whom Joshua Duggar molested or how. As I've previously said, it’s about a family that markets itself as a paragon of Christian purity – all the while burying a skeleton of one son’s child molesting in a way that looks a lot like a deliberate cover up of a crime.

For what it’s worth, I believe the Duggars when they say that they considered the incidents of Joshua’s abuse over and done with and no longer a part of who and what they are by the time the reality TV series began. But here’s the other problem: the public doesn’t see it that way. When you become reality TV stars, you not only give up some of your privacy, you don’t get to dictate how the public sees you.

One can understand why the Duggars wouldn’t get that. But there’s no excuse for Megyn Kelly not to.

Watch it below, from the June 5 The Kelly File.