Everything was going very well for Amy Duggar until around 2015 — when the news broke
that her cousin Josh had molested five underage girls.
The scandal created a rift within the conservative Christian family, with Amy, the more liberal
Duggar, encouraged to pick a side.
Up to that point, Amy had played lead in two spinoff episodes of her family's hit TLC reality
show, 19 Kids and Counting, and her star was rising in Nashville as a young country music
singer.
But how much have things changed for the reality star?
Let's take a look at Amy Duggar's very public highs and lows.
Going to Nashville
Amy Duggar King has been known as the black sheep of her ultra-conservative family.
Amy's mother is the sister of Duggar patriarch Jim Bob.
She appeared on several episodes of the show, and spun off for two specials.
One was titled A Duggar Leaves Home, in which the young Arkansas-native leaves home for
Nashville, Tennessee, to pursue a career as a country music singer.
At first, she received some sharp criticism from her producer.
"OK, Amy?”
“Yeah?”
“That really scares me.”
“Why?”
“Because it's horrifically awful."
But despite the initial feedback, Amy Duggar went on to release a self-titled album in
2006.
She ended up getting payback against the man who dissed her singing skills later on, though
— by not paying him back.
In 2014, producer Jamie Slocum, who helped Amy realize her goal of becoming a country
music star, spoke out against her for being cheap.
Duggar's manager helped the reality star negotiate a much bigger contract for her two spin-off
specials.
After discovering that Amy was receiving significantly more money per episode of the new show, Slocum
wanted to be paid commensurate with Amy's new contract.
Slocum said, "Now that there is bigger money coming down the line they just want me to
go away.
They don't want to pay me because they are very cheap.
They thought I was just trying to be nice … They basically decided to tell me to take
a hike after I doubled their fee."
Slocum added that he was considering taking the Duggars to court over the earnings issue.
The bad influence
Amy has revealed that her uncle considers her to be a bad influence on their many straight-laced,
conservative children.
When one of her fans asked if Amy's cousins ever come over to her house to watch TV and
stay the night, Amy responded by saying, "Hey there!
We've had a girls night before and have gone out to eat.
It's a rule though that if I want to spend quality time with them I have to come see
them.
They don't want me to influence them."
While Amy may have strayed from the Arkansas homestead to pursue a career in music, she
still holds many of the same Christian values as her extended family.
On Instagram, Amy wrote, "It used to really bother me and then I realized that I just
live knowing that God gives us grace.
I can only be myself and even though we don't see eye to eye on every little thing we are
still family and I do still love them."
Those same values were challenged publicly when — after a 2006 police report — Amy's
cousin Josh was accused of molesting five underage girls in 2002, four of whom were
his sisters.
While she had nothing to do with the alleged abuses, Josh Duggar has certainly cast a considerable
shadow on the family name.
Airing grievances
Amy met Dillon King in July 2014
One year later, Amy and Dillon were engaged.
Then, by September 2015, the two were married in a ceremony at Horton Farms near Bentonville,
Arkansas, one town over from where Amy grew up.
Amy's uncle and aunt attended the wedding with several of their children, though the
Duggar clan exited once the reception, and the real partying, began.
Less than a year and a half after getting hitched, the couple landed a spot on WE tv's
Marriage Boot Camp: Reality Stars.
Before the first episode aired, a teaser was released in which, during a previously taped
counseling session on the program, Amy said that she had been physically abused by her
father growing up.
"He picked me up by my throat, all the way up to the ceiling.
He was like, ‘You will brush your teeth,’ and I was scared s---less.”
Amy went on to say that he regularly called her names and once tried to run over her with
a car.
Before the episode aired, a preview clip of the dramatic moment was obscure enough that
some people mistook the revelation to be about her new husband.
Amy debunked the buzz in a December 2016 Twitter post, writing, "The story I was describing
in the Marriage Boot Camp teaser does not involve Dillon in any way."
After the teaser aired, Amy fired back at the show on Twitter claiming that through
misleading editing, WE tv had twisted her words to make the abuse sound more severe
than it actually was, which hurt her relationship with her family.
"I think they were a little shocked about it, and probably a little hurt that it was
mentioned."
Between the manufactured drama on the show and her connection to the misdeeds of her
cousin Josh, Amy's public image has been unfairly maligned.
But in fact, she and Dillon appear to be pretty happy together.
Breaking all the rules
Growing up in a fundamentalist Christian household comes with a long list of dating no-nos.
For Jim Bob and Michelle, there's a specific list of courtship rules, including no kissing
or physical contact before marriage and chaperoned dates.
But Amy wants nothing to do with her aunt and uncle's strict system.
She told People Magazine, "I think kissing before marriage should happen.
What if you get married and then that connection isn't there?"
But Amy's taken her rejection of the confines of her Christian family name farther than
that.
She revealed that neither she nor Dillon were virgins when they met, and that she was glad
for it.
She said, "I think that if I was a virgin on my wedding night and had never been kissed,
I would end up rocking in the corner!
That is so much emotion all at once.'"
Even though she decided to wait until their wedding night to sleep with Dillon, she's
happy with her choice.
"It looked like I jumped from guy to guy, but I'm glad I dated that much before marriage
because it showed me what kind of characteristics I wanted to find and the personalities that
worked well with mine."
Hey, not all the Duggars can be satisfied with side hugs.
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