I used to watch "9 Kids and Counting", and was just amazed and slightly disgusted by that family. Amazed at how organized they were (you have to be with that many kids) and disgusted for so many other reasons. Now the kids are mostly growed up and how the truth is being revealed.

Feds demand a 20-year sentence for Josh Duggar after his child-pornography conviction, citing his 'violent sexual interest in children'

Federal prosecutors are demanding a 20-year sentence for the former reality-TV personality Josh Duggar following his December conviction of receiving and possessing child pornography.

Prosecutors on Wednesday filed a 32-page sentencing memorandum, saying that the severity of Duggar's crimes — as well as his "grave" risk to reoffend — warranted two decades in prison.

Prosecutors said their decision to request 20 years was based, in part, on Duggar's "prior sexual exploitation of multiple minors," his "extraordinary efforts" to view child-abuse material, and his "refusal to take accountability for or acknowledge any of his criminal conduct."

"Duggar has a deep-seated, pervasive, and violent sexual interest in children and a willingness to act on that interest," prosecutors said.

Duggar, the 34-year-old former star of TLC's "19 Kids and Counting," previously pleaded not guilty to both of his charges. His attorneys on Wednesday said they planned to appeal the conviction.

During Duggar's trial in December, prosecutors accused him of downloading known child-sexual-abuse material in May 2019 using a desktop computer at the Arkansas car dealership he owned. Several law-enforcement officials and expert witnesses testified at the trial about the material discovered on the computer and the efforts Duggar took to evade detection.

For instance, an expert witness testified at trial that Duggar installed a Linux partition on his computer's hard drive so that he could download and view the child-sexual-abuse material without triggering the anti-pornography "accountability" software installed on his computer.

The software is intended to monitor the internet usage of people with pornography addictions by sharing reports with an "accountability partner," which, in this case, was Duggar's wife.

"Duggar is a very sophisticated computer user with a history of downloading, installing, and utilizing peer-to-peer file-sharing programs and an understanding that his use of those programs would — and, indeed, did — result in the distribution of the material to others," prosecutors wrote in their sentencing memorandum.

Duggar's sexual interest in children remains 'unacknowledged and untreated,' the feds said

Prosecutors also said Duggar had demonstrated a "pattern of activity involving child sexual abuse," citing his 2015 child-molestation scandal. In that case, he was accused of sexually abusing his siblings, but Duggar was not criminally charged.

Prosecutors used it against Duggar at trial — even getting an old family friend to testify that Duggar confessed multiple times to fondling four of his sisters when they were children.

"At base, this pattern reflects a clear and long-standing sexual interest in prepubescent females," prosecutors wrote in their sentencing memorandum. "And troublingly, this sexual interest in children has gone and will likely continue to go — based on Duggar's conduct throughout this case — unacknowledged and untreated."

Prosecutors added the egregiously "sadistic" images and videos Duggar downloaded and viewed should be factored into his sentence. Some of the material included videos and images of prepubescent girls as young as 7 or 8 being penetrated and violently abused. One file depicted the sexual abuse and torture of an infant, prosecutors said.

Duggar's attorneys filed a sentencing memorandum of their own Wednesday, saying their client should receive a maximum sentence of five years. They said Duggar "maintains his innocence and intends to exercise his right to an appeal" and asked that the judge "consider this crime within its proper context and consider the person Duggar really is."

Duggar's attorneys emphasized throughout his trial that Duggar was not the only one with access to the desktop computer at his car dealership and argued that the materials had been downloaded and viewed by someone else.

Duggar is scheduled to be sentenced on May 25.