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 "While espousing faith and family values, I have been
unfaithful to my wife," Duggar, 27, a former campaigner for
family values who appeared on the TLC show "19 Kids and
Counting," said in a statement posted on his family's website.
"The last few years, while publicly stating I was fighting
against immorality in our country I was hiding my own personal
failures," he added, calling himself the "biggest hypocrite
ever."
The Discovery Communications-owned network last month canceled
"19 Kids," after disclosures in May that Duggar had sexually
abused four of his sisters when he was a teenager, one of whom
was under 10 years old at the time.
Duggar apologized in a statement, saying he "acted inexcusably,"
and resigned from his job at Christian lobbying group Family
Research Council.
In an earlier version of Duggar's statement posted on the
family's website and reported by People magazine and Buzzfeed,
he said "I have secretly over the last several years been
viewing pornography on the internet and this became a secret
addiction and I became unfaithful to my wife."
The reference to pornography was removed in an updated version
of the statement.
Duggar's parents, conservative Christians Jim Bob and Michelle
Duggar, said on Thursday they were dismayed over the Ashley
Madison reports concerning their son.
"When we learned of this late last night our hearts were
broken," they said in a statement.
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 Hackers this week dumped a batch of data stolen from the
Ashley Madison website detailing millions of members. The site's
tagline is "Life is short. Have an affair."
Duggar is so far the highest-profile person found among the
site's clientele.
A link to the statement was posted on the Duggar family's Facebook
page but deleted after a barrage of comments from fans criticizing
Josh Duggar for his actions. On Twitter, Duggar became a trending
topic as users expressed their disapproval.
A TLC representative declined to comment on Thursday, but said the
network is still scheduled to release "Breaking The Silence" on Aug.
30, a documentary on child sex abuse featuring Duggar's sisters Jill
and Jessa, who publicly forgave him for molesting them in the past.
Duggar and his wife, Anna, were married in 2008 and have four
children.
(Reporting by Piya Sinah-Roy in Los Angeles; Editing by Peter Cooney
and Christian Plumb)
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