Josh Duggar has checked into a ‘long-term treatment facility’ for — well, you know

Josh Duggar of “19 Kids and Counting” fame is seeking treatment of an undisclosed nature after finding himself embroiled in what his parents are calling a “most difficult situation.”

“Yesterday Josh checked himself into a long-term treatment center,” Michele and Jim Bob Duggar said Wednesday in a statement posted on the family’s website. “For him it will be a long journey toward wholeness and recovery. We pray that in this he comes to complete repentance and sincere change.”

On Aug. 19, it was revealed that Josh Dugger, a proponent of a very conservative religious lifestyle, had two paid subscriptions to the cheating website Ashley Madison. The following day, he admitted a “secret addiction” to Internet porn that he said resulted in his cheating on his wife and the mother of his four children, Anna Duggar.

“I have been the biggest hypocrite ever. While espousing faith and family values, I have been unfaithful to my wife,” he wrote. That statement was later edited to remove the porn-addiction revelation. It was reported that Josh Duggar had spent nearly $1,000 on Ashley Madison subscriptions between February 2013 and May 2015.

“As parents we are so deeply grieved by our son’s decisions and actions,” Michelle and Jim Bob said Wednesday. “His wrong choices have deeply hurt his precious wife and children and have negatively affected so many others. He has also brought great insult to the values and faith we hold dear.”

They thanked their supporters and said they in turn would be offering support to their grandchildren and daughter-in-law “as she also receives counsel and help for her own heart and future.”

A family source told People last week that Anna Duggar has no intention of divorcing Josh. However, Anna’s brother Daniel Keller came to her defense Monday on Facebook, saying he’d offered to pay for her and the kids to come live with him, and criticizing his own parents for encouraging Anna to forgive Josh.

“She said she’s staying where she’s at,” Keller wrote. “But I won’t stop trying to get that pig out of our family.”

Josh Duggar’s scandals didn’t start with the Ashley Madison hack, and may not end there either.

In May, it was revealed that as a minor he’d had inappropriate contact with five underage girls, four of whom were his sisters. After the story broke, the 27-year-old, who was never arrested or charged, left his lobbying post at the conservative Family Research Council.

In an early June interview with Fox News’ Megyn Kelly, Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar revealed that at age 15, their son had been sent to a Christian-based “little training center” in Little Rock, Ark., run by a man who “really helped young men who had made unwise choices in their lives to get straightened out.”

The man said “Josh could come down there and actually do some construction work with him and he would counsel him and work with him and hopefully get him straightened out,” Jim Bob Duggar told Kelly. The patriarch said he later took his son to the local police station to confess to an officer about what he’d done. (That officer is currently serving a 56-year sentence for child pornography. Jim Bob said they “had no idea that what that officer was going through on his own.”)

After the training camp and confession, “Josh was a changed person,” his father said, noting that his son and the daughters who were involved had gotten counseling from “an accredited professional counselor.”

In July, TLC canceled the long-running “19 Kids and Counting.”

Follow Christie D’Zurilla on Twitter @theCDZ and Google+. Follow the Ministry of Gossip on Twitter @LATcelebs.

ALSO:

Los Angeles man files class-action lawsuit against Ashley Madison site

Josh Duggar calls himself ‘the biggest hypocrite,’ admits cheating on wife

Nicole Polizzi says husband didn’t use Ashley Madison, calls cheating allegations ‘absurd’

Josh Duggar ‘was a child preying on a child,’ his father says