Toby Willis, father of 12 children with a show on TLC, arrested for child rape
The Willis Family was a TLC show about a family of 12 kids, ranging in age from five to 24, who sang and danced together in a country band with celtic influences. They came to fame competing on America’s Got Talent in 2014 and were signed to TLC in 2015 where their show aired seven episodes its first season and six this year. I’d never heard of this show until this latest terrible news, but it sounds like a lot of the reality show tripe on TLC. A quick glance at YouTube makes it look similar to The Duggars – an idealized, fake, overly simplified look into a family. While The Willis family aren’t thought to be Quiverful and I can’t verify whether they’re evangelical Christians, they are conservative Christians. Like the Duggars they’ve named all their kids with “J” names too. Unfortunately, like the Duggars, one of the stars was just arrested for predatory sexual behavior with children.
The Tennessee Bureau of Investigations announced that they began investigating Toby Nathaniel Willis, 46, on Aug. 29, and discovered that he allegedly had a sexual encounter with an underage girl in Nashville about 12 years ago.
TBI agents say they arrested Willis in Greenville, Kentucky, where he reportedly fled from his home in Ashland City, Tennessee to avoid police. He was charged with one count of rape of a child.
Willis and his family starred on TLC’s The Willis Family, which followed their life as a musical family of 14. Toby, his wife Brenda, and their 12 children first rose to fame when they reached the quarterfinals of season nine of America’s Got Talent.
TLC has removed The Willis Family page from its website.
A source tells PEOPLE that the show was canceled back in May, shortly after their second season aired.
“The family was alerted of the cancellation back in may 2016,” the source said. “The network performed extensive background checks on all the family [members] and found no issues.
“Obviously this is something they were never aware of,” the source added.
The Christian family’s conservative beliefs played a role in their TLC series. However, during an interview with PEOPLE last year, the couple’s oldest daughter Jessica said their household isn’t restrictive.
“We didn’t have a lot of restrictions,” Jessica said. “It wasn’t like, ‘Don’t do this!’ It was more like, ‘Try this or that.’ We’re always encouraged to do more things, but our parents are right there to catch us if it is a bridge too far.”
“We try to just kind of stay true to what the Bible says and live that in a very loving, nonjudgmental way without pushing that on anyone else,” Toby’s wife Brenda told PEOPLE at the time.
TLC is claiming that the show was already canceled but we’ve heard rumors that they knew about Josh Duggar’s crimes for years and didn’t do anything about it, so I side eye this version. They also claim that they did extensive background checks and a source tells US they “found no issues with Toby” prior to this. I hope TLC sticks to their guns and don’t continue working with the Willises by giving the children spin-off shows. (Like they did with the Duggars, and look how that’s turning out.) I also hope that these children are safe and that a thorough investigation is made into this family by CPS.
When looking for clips of this show on YouTube I found one where the father wouldn’t let his 19 year-old daughter, Jet, go on a trip by herself because “I just don’t think that’s a wise thing to let a young girl go off by herself, even though she’s going to be around some really good people, it’s just prudent to send them off in groups.”
Also they posted this on their Facebook page. It looks like someone wrote these words on their arms and like it’s one of the older boys.
photos via Facebook
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