Jinger Duggar Breaks Silence on Why She Didn’t Participate in ‘Shiny Happy People’ Docuseries

Jinger Vuolo (née Duggar) broke her silence on why she didn’t participate alongside her sister Jill Duggar in the Prime Video docuseries Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets.

“Growing up on TV and just in the public eye in general, I know that once you speak on something, kind of like sit down [and] record something on someone else’s platform, then there’s little to no editing power,” Jinger, 29, said in a conversation with her husband, Jeremy Vuolo, in a video posted to their YouTube channel on Monday, December 11. “And that’s what I was a little unsure about.”

The Counting On alum admitted that most things in the documentary were “truthful,” however she wanted to tell the story in “her own words.”

“I just didn’t want to speak to IBLP in that context,” Jinger explained, adding that her book, Becoming Free Indeed, was already in the pipeline. “I thought it would be best for me just to be able to tell my own story how I wanted and for those viewing it, they wouldn’t see it through a bad lens.”

The docuseries, which was released in June, took a deeper look into the Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP), the strict religion parents Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar raised their large family to follow.

IBLP is a non-denominational Christian organization that was founded by Bill Gothard in 1961. The institution set out to “introduce people to the Lord Jesus Christ” according to the IBLP website and it was widely known that Gothard’s teachings focused on modest dress, male authority and large families.

Shiny Happy People revealed major bombshells and members of the Duggar family, including Jill, her husband Derick Dillard, and their cousin Amy King, were involved in the production of the series. Throughout the production, Jill made several allegations against her family and IBLP.

“My dad does control a lot of things in the family,” she said. “Family relationships were already kinda rocky … Everything within the family dynamic has shifted, and not for the better.”

As for Jinger, one of the biggest reasons for her absence from the Shiny Happy People documentary was because she was afraid there would be no “redeeming factor for what actually took place.”

“Those teachings of Bill Gothard were awful and they were so deceptive because they were mixed in, there would be elements of truth from scripture and it would just take a twist, where it was very damaging,” the TLC personality continued. “With something like this in a documentary, I was afraid that maybe things wouldn’t be handled as I want them to be and so that’s why I didn’t go on.”