The Duggar family spent a decade on national television as the wholesome face of fundamentalist Christianity. What viewers didn't see was the organization behind the image — and the man who built it.

Bill Gothard founded the Institute in Basic Life Principles in 1961. By the 1970s and 80s, he was filling convention centers with ten thousand people per event. He had endorsements from sitting governors, board members who were U.S. senators, and millions of families who restructured their entire lives around his teachings. He held no ordination, no theological degree, and no credentials of any kind.

Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar attended their first IBLP seminar in 1985 and called it life-changing. Their family would spend the next three decades as the organization's most visible advertisement.

In Part 1 of this five-part series from Hidden Killers and True Crime Today, host Tony Brueski examines IBLP's doctrine of total male authority, the ATI homeschooling curriculum that isolated children from outside institutions, and the theological framework that made reporting abuse virtually impossible from within.

More than thirty women have accused Gothard of sexual harassment and abuse. Gothard has denied all of these allegations. A civil lawsuit filed in 2016 was dismissed in 2018 on statute of limitations grounds. No criminal charges have ever been filed.

Gothard is 91. He is still operating online. The organization he built is still intact in thousands of homes that never made the news.

Before the molestation. Before the trial. Before the arrest that happened this week. This is the machine — and this is how it worked.

This is Part 1 of 5.

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