Sister Wives’ Leon Brown Breaks Silence on Childhood, Describing It as Growing Up in a ‘Cult’
Leon Brown, the child of Kody Brown and his ex-wife Meri Brown, shared details of a childhood shaped by religious indoctrination and homeschooling in a new TikTok video.
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- Leon Brown, 31, opened up in a TikTok video about their childhood, describing their experience growing up as part of the Sister Wives family as life inside a “cult.”
- Leon explained that fear and isolation kept them from knowing many people outside the family and community as a child, until the family’s move to Utah introduced a more immersive religious routine.
- The video follows similar remarks from Leon’s sister, Madison Brush, and from Christine Brown Woolley, who has also described the family’s dynamic in comparable terms.
Leon Brown is opening up about a childhood they’ve largely kept private.
In a TikTok video posted Tuesday, August 4, the former Sister Wives star, now 31, spoke at length about growing up as the child of Kody Brown and his ex-wife Meri Brown, describing the experience in stark terms: they were raised, Leon said, inside a “cult.”
Leon walked viewers through the early years of that upbringing, recalling a household that at the time included “four parents and two older siblings.” The family relocated to Wyoming when Leon was 3 and stayed there until Leon turned 10, a stretch of childhood spent largely removed from the outside world.
“I was really shy and really fearful as a child, so I didn’t really know people outside of the cult,” Leon said in the video. “We were homeschooled until we moved to Utah when I was 10. And then we started going to the same church, a cult church, in Utah. At that point, it got a little bit more all-encompassing.”
Leon detailed a packed religious schedule once the family settled in Utah, describing “church school” sessions held Sunday through Wednesday, followed by a Thursday program called “primary,” which Leon characterized as religious instruction aimed at children. Despite the intensity of it, Leon’s feelings about that period were mixed rather than simply negative.
“I loved primary,” Leon said. “I loved learning about Jesus. I loved learning about church history. I think there’s some religious scrupulosity there. It was rewarding, and I was rewarded for it. So I’m not actually sure if I like it or not. Who’s to say?”
Leon signaled that the video was only the beginning of a longer story to come, writing in the caption, “This story will take many forms and be in many parts, but here’s a start. Thanks for listening & being respectful.” Leon closed out the clip by acknowledging how unfamiliar it felt to speak publicly about it: “This is weird because I don’t talk about this a lot.”
The description of the Brown family dynamic as cult-like isn’t new it echoes language Christine Brown Woolley used in her 2025 memoir, Sister Wife: A Memoir of Faith, Family, and Finding Freedom. Christine, 54, who shares six children with Kody, wrote that with time and distance she came to believe she’d both grown up in and raised her own kids within a cult, while also noting she didn’t associate that experience with abuse or an inability to leave. She described it instead as a narrow “tunnel of thoughts” that shaped the family’s worldview, one that some of her children recognized on their own as young adults.
Leon’s comments also arrive against a tense backdrop with Kody. In November, during a confessional on the TLC series, Kody said he’d begun therapy specifically to repair strained relationships with several of his estranged children, telling cameras he needed “the tools to be able to engage a relationship” and claiming he had reached out to each of his kids multiple times. Leon pushed back hard on that account shortly after the episode aired, writing on Instagram Stories that they hadn’t heard from Kody since their brother’s death and accusing him of avoiding them at the funeral. Kody and Janelle Brown’s son, Garrison, died by suicide in March 2024.
Leon isn’t the only sibling to speak publicly about the toll of that upbringing. In late June, Madison Brush Kody and Janelle’s daughter wrote on Instagram that she “didn’t grow up knowing what peace felt like,” describing a childhood she called chaotic and one she’s spent her adult life working to move past. Brush said that building a life away from the family eventually gave her something new: the ability to choose calm even amid disorder.
For Leon, the TikTok marks a first step into a story they’ve said will unfold in stages. What comes next and how much more they choose to share remains to be seen, but the response so far suggests an audience ready to listen.
