The calm and composed Kendra Duggar, seemingly prepared for the inevitable, can be seen in a video footage being booked into custody at the Washington County Detention Center in Arkansas on March 20th. Both she and her husband, Joseph Duggar, were charged by the Tontitown Police Department with four counts of endangering the welfare of a minor in the second degree and four counts of false imprisonment in the second degree. The couple is now set to appear for their first court hearing on these charges on April 29th, and officials in Arkansas have confirmed that the investigation into them is still ongoing.
In the booking footage obtained by PEOPLE, Kendra can be seen arriving at the jail just before 5 p.m., accompanied by a group of Washington County Sheriff's Office deputies and other suspects. Unlike her husband, who was wearing a belt, sneakers, and his wedding ring at the time of his arrest, Kendra arrives at the facility in jeans, a loose shirt, slides, and appears to have left all her jewelry at home - including her wedding ring. She was booked into custody in less than four minutes. One of the deputies seemed surprised at how quickly Kendra moved through the process, asking her supervisor at one point: "Are we done with her?"
After being searched, Kendra moved to an adjacent room where she sat alone on a bench and briefly spoke with an employee at the facility. She was then led out of the room by a female guard. She was released less than 90 minutes later after posting her $1,470 bail, though her husband remains behind bars at the same facility.
Joseph was arrested two days prior on a warrant out of Bay County, Fla., that charged the father of four with lewd and lascivious behavior-molestation of a victim less than 12 years old, and lewd and lascivious behavior conducted by a person 18 years or older.
Kendra was charged following a joint search of her family's home by the Arkansas Department of Human Services and Tontitown Police Department. "I can tell you that the arrest was a result of a home inspection, and the door locks being on the exterior of the doors," a source close to the family previously told PEOPLE.
A spokesperson for the family said that the charges filed against Kendra are "totally unrelated" to the felony charges her husband faces in Florida - a claim that a police source also confirmed to PEOPLE. "She's not suspected or accused of participating in his alleged crime," the family spokesperson said.
The "alleged crime" is the sexual assault of a 9-year-old girl, which Joseph allegedly confessed to while speaking with the girl's father on March 17th. The girl, now 14, alleged in a forensic interview with the Bay County Sheriff's Office (BCSO) that during a 2020 family vacation in Panama Beach City, Duggar "asked her to sit next to him on a couch and covered them with a blanket," then "manipulated the victim's underwear and grazed her genitals," per a statement. According to the BCSO statement, the girl alleged that he "would also continue to rub his hands on her thighs."
Duggar was 13 years old when he started appearing on the TLC reality series 17 Kids and Counting about his family, who are devout Independent Baptists. When the series began, there were just 17 siblings but by the end, that number had grown to 19 - with the series retitled 19 Kids and Counting. In 2015, TLC cancelled the series after claims surfaced that the eldest Duggar child, Josh, had molested four of his sisters when they were children. In 2021, a federal jury convicted Josh of receiving and possessing material depicting minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct after prosecutors presented evidence that he had "repeatedly downloaded and viewed images and videos depicting the sexual abuse of children, including images of prepubescent children and depictions of sadistic abuse," per the Department of Justice. He is now serving out his sentence at a low security institution in Texas and is set to be released in 2032.
