Phone calls in jails and prisons are almost never private.
Kendra Caldwell is finding that out the hard way, as multiple calls to her disgraced husband have leaked.
One of the latest pieces of Duggar audio show her giving Joseph some difficult-to-hear news.
He’s not her priority.
Her ‘babies’ were her ‘purpose’
People obtained the jailhouse phone call between Kendra and Joseph, the latter still being behind bars.
(As you may recall, mother-in-law Michelle bailed out Kendra a little over an hour after her arrest.)
Joseph was arrested on Wednesday, March 18. Two days later, on Friday, March 20, Kendra was arrested.
“I think Friday has probably been my hardest day, but that’s crazy to say because Wednesday was crazy hard,” she told her husband over the phone on Tuesday, March 24.
“But it’s just like, when you then take my babies from me,” Kendra explained. “They were who I was just going to pour my life into.”
During the call, Joseph assured Keddra that their four young children are her “purpose right now.”
Within the cult to which most of the Duggars belong, women and children are essentially property.
Kendra is a wife and a mother, and clearly struggles to understand her identity outside of this.
The cult is so strict in its ban of divorce that Anna Duggar is still married to Josh, the other disgraced son in the family.
This means that Kendra is essentially stuck, with her husband extradited to Florida and with her barred from contacting her kids until April 29 at the earliest.
‘We’ll just see where the rest of it leads us’
During another phone call, Kendra told Joseph that he was not her priority.
“I’m fighting for the kids,” she said, “and they’re my number one priority right now.”
Joseph seemed to agree.
He told his wife that he is “100% behind” her.
Joseph then affirmed that she “should be fighting for them the most.”
“I just want you to know, through all of this, whatever happens, that’s who’s coming first,” Kendra reiterated, as if worried that Joseph didn’t understand.
“Then,” she said, “we’ll just see where the rest of it leads us.”
Kendra continued: “And try to put the pieces together.”
From these calls, it really sounds like she is concerned that Joseph isn’t hearing what she’s trying to say. We heard a similar message when she told him that his parents had hired an attorney for her — and only for her.
Here, it sounds like she’s telling him that she’s going to try to regain custody of their kids, and that the outcome of his trial is his business.
Perhaps this was inevitable, given their twisted cult
Before the call was over, Kendra told Joseph that their four children love him.
Of course, they were already safely out of her custody by then after her arrest for child endangerment and false imprisonment.
These days, Kendra appears to be in hiding — somewhere that Jim Bob and Michelle stashed her away.
She’ll have to show up to court on April 29. Perhaps then, the public will learn more about her arrest and the charges that she is facing.
For now … this is a sad, awful, and not altogether surprising situation.