Anna Duggar Forwarded Josh Duggar a Message Describing His Prison Sentence as ‘Absolutely Crazy’

Anna Duggar forwarded a message to husband Josh Duggar that called the decision by a federal judge to sentence him to 151 months in prison for possessing and receiving child sexual abuse materials (CSAM) as a failure of the justice system.

“I just can’t even wrap my mind around this system of ours,” read the message to Josh that was obtained by PEOPLE. “[W]hat purpose does it serve to put a citizen away for that long, especially for a crime that was actually victimless?”

Josh created a “password-protected partition” on his computer to download CSAM using the dark web and online file-sharing software multiple times in 2019, according to an investigation by Homeland Security agents.

One of those agents, Gerald Faulkner, testified at Josh’s detention hearing, and called one of the videos Josh downloaded among the “top five worst of the worst” he had ever seen because it depicted the abuse of an 18-month-old toddler.

“I am incensed by the ridiculousness of it ALL,” the message later said, calling the sentence “absolutely crazy.

The person who wrote the message also said they could not understand why a “productive member of society, a business owner, a father, a husband, a taxpayer” would be sent away to prison when “our society NEEDS these far more desperately than it needs more prisoners.”

The message also included a comforting psalm for Josh and multiple declarations of support. The Department of Justice has long pushed back against claims that CSAM is a victimless crime, explaining that it often “results in the continued abuse and exploitation of child victims, and the abuse of new children every day.”

Once those videos are disseminated, the “victimization continues in perpetuity” for victims who will live their entire lives knowing that “documentation of their sexual abuse is on the internet,” according to the DOJ.

Many of these victims are also groomed or blackmailed into making these videos, according to the DOJ, and in some cases “feel so desperate that they commit suicide.”

Anna told Josh that she presumed his sentence would be cut down to 106 months, but that has not been the case.

Josh, whose fourth and final appeal is soon to be decided by the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas, has actually had his prison sentence extended on three different occasions and is now scheduled to be released from FCI Seagoville in Texas on Feb. 2, 2033.