Watch: Sister Wives’ Leon Brown Makes Rare Comment About “Cult” Upbringing
Leon Brown is getting candid about their childhood in a “family of four parents.”
The Sister Wives alum—whose dad Kody Brown was spiritually married to mom Meri Brown, as well as Janelle Brown and Christine Brown Woolley, when they were born in 1995—detailed their unconventional upbringing in a polygamist household.
“We were in the cult then,” Leon said in an Aug. 4 TikTok video. “We were homeschooled until we moved to Utah when I was 10, and then we started going to the same church—cult church—which was sort of like the main one.”
According to the 31-year-old—the third oldest of Kody’s 18 kids, including five from Kody’s marriage to fourth sister wife Robyn Brown—religion “got a little all encompassing” when they started attending the church’s school.
“On Thursdays, we had primary, which is like religious education for children—or religious indoctrination for children,” they continued. “There’s some religious, like, scrupulosity there. It was rewarding, and I was rewarded for it.”
While Leon said they “loved” going to primary classes at the time, they’re now “not actually sure” if they enjoyed its teachings looking back.
“Who’s to say?” they added. “This is like weird because I don’t talk about this a lot.”
But Leon isn’t the only one of the Browns who has described their family life as a “cult.” Christine—who was with Kody for more than 25 years before their 2021 breakup—believes she “grew up in a cult” within a “fundamentalist, polygamist Mormon” community.
Leon Brown/Instagram
“I believe I raised my children in a cult,” the mom of six wrote in her 2025 memoir Sister Wife: A Memoir of Faith, Family, and Finding Freedom. “I hadn’t been brainwashed. But just like everyone else, I had a tunnel of thoughts with a particular set of boundaries.”
Christine said she had a revelation when some of her kids “figured it out as young adults,” with her daughter Gwendlyn, 24, coming back from church camp one day telling her how “all these girls want to do is have babies.”
“As I became stronger in my own identity, I thought, God is fine with me, and I am fine with him,” the 54-year-old shared. “I didn’t need to be part of a church, and I didn’t need to buy into ideas about men’s place over women or pierced ears.”
Puddle Monkey Prods/Figure 8/Kobal/Shutterstock
And ultimately, Christine, who has been married to David Woolley since 2023, walked away from her church before her split from Kody.
“The good parts of me didn’t go away with my Jesus jammies,” she added. “I believe in treating people well and fairly. I believe all the things my mom taught me. I think there are many different gods and religions and there’s beauty in that.”
For a deeper dive into the Sister Wives family tree, read on…
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