NEW YORK — “Duck Dynasty” star Jep Robertson is opening up in a new interview about his experience being sexually abused as a child. Speaking to Entertainment Tonight while promoting his memoir “The Good, the Bad and the Grace of God,” Robertson explained how a female high school student inappropriately touched him when he was younger.
“I was young, 6 [years old], and it was on a school bus. It was an older girl. Back then the high school students would ride on the same bus as the grade school,” he told ET. “And so there was this girl on there that was just real mean. But yeah, a lot of things took place, scary stuff. It was tough. I didn’t want to go to school. I had a lot of absences.”
Robertson also detailed the molestation in the book, which he co-wrote with wife Jessica Robertson.
He explained why he revealed his story now in the interview, saying, “I think for a while I just tried to bury it so deep that I kind of forgot about it for a good while. I think maybe God put that on me for meeting somebody like Jessica who had gone through some hard times herself, and I think that it made our relationship stronger once we talked about it.”
This isn’t the only child sex abuse story featuring a reality TV show star that is making headlines. ET brings Robertson’s recounting back to Josh Duggar’s current scandal, where he sexually abused four of his sisters and a baby sitter when they all were younger, and asked the “Duck Dynasty” personality to share his thoughts on the “19 Kids and Counting” family’s trauma.
“I don’t really know him, so I don’t really know in his heart, because our family’s been through some stuff with the media,” Robertson said. “They seem like a sweet family. But I don’t know.”
