The Brown family became the poster children of polygamy after Sister Wives premiered in 2010. The family tried to convince the world that not all fundamentalist Mormon sects have child brides like Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) leader Warren Jeffs.
Kody and his wives adamantly denied their church allows practices of underage marriage, child abuse, and incest. However, Christine Brown’s grandfather and Apostolic United Brethren (AUB) leader had many child brides.
Kody Brown denies the AUB allows underage brides.
As documented on Netflix’s docuseries, Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey, in 2011, Jeffs was sentenced to life plus 20 years in prison for two counts of sexual assault of a child. He is said to have at least 70 wives. Of those, 24 of his wives were underage when he married them, some as young as 12. He is currently serving his life sentence at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice and will be eligible for parole in 2038
TLC’s Sister Wives premiered during the height of Jeffs’ child sexual assault case, and the Brown family aimed to change the world’s perception of polygamy. In the Sister Wives 2012 memoir, Becoming Sister Wives: The Story of an Unconventional Marriage, Kody discusses the atrocities in the FLDS in the book’s introduction. “These are not my beliefs. This is not my world,” Kody pens.
“While we share a belief in the principle of celestial plural marriage, I want to make it clear that the practices of the FLDS have no place in my universe. We belong to a different religious community, one that has several thousand members worldwide. In our faith, incest and spousal abuse are serious crimes, which, when discovered, result in immediate legal action.”
Kody Brown
Christine Brown’s uncle Vance Allred reveals the rampant sexual assault in the AUB.
For years, the Sister Wives stars Kody, and his wives have adamantly stated that their church has never allowed child brides. However, the Sister Wives cast has hidden the dark truth from viewers.
Christine’s late uncle, Vance Allred, shares secrets from the AUB and about his father, Rulon Allred. During a three-part Interview conducted in 2017 via Mormon Stories Podcast, Vance detailed his departure from the AUB due to rampant sexual assault of children.
He claims that the sexual assault of children by the council members and other elders in the group was constant. When he found out about the sexual abuse of these children, he went to his uncle, Owen Arthur Allred, who was the leader of the AUB from 1977 to 2005, but Owen refused to intervene to stop it.
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Vance left the church with his wife and eight children to protect them from the abuse. He claimed his life was completely destroyed after leaving the church.
AUB leader and Christine’s grandfather Rulon C. Allred had many child brides
Vance claims that the sexual abuse wasn’t just by fathers and brothers to the children but was also at the hands of the leaders like his father, Rulon, who had many child brides.
The AUB believes that polygamy or plural marriage is a requirement for exaltation in heaven. And the only way to enter the highest level of the celestial kingdom or become a “god” is for a man to have multiple wives. These ideas stemmed from Brigham Young’s teachings back in the 19th century.
In Vance’s interview, he said the demand for wives was high, and the men in power began running out of women to marry. The lack of women over 18 caused the men seeking wives to start taking underage girls as brides.
Reality TV blogger @Withoutacrystalball dug up records and found that the AUB leader, Rulon, had at least three underage brides. Christine’s grandfather was 29 when he married 15-year-old Ruth Rachel Barlow. Six months later, he married 17-year-old Melba Finlayson. He then married her twin sister, Mabel Finlayson, three months after she turned 18. Then when he was 38 years old, he married another 15-year-old girl, Ethel Jessop.
The former AUB leader was imprisoned twice for his polygamy-related crimes and spent years running from the FBI in hiding.
On Sister Wives, the Brown family packed up and moved to Las Vegas to avoid the police investigation against them in Utah. Christine talked about how her grandfather was persecuted for practicing polygamy and how his arrest was a traumatic experience for their family. However, she never mentioned that it was because he had three underage brides.
For many seasons, the Brown family and TLC have tried to convince Sister Wives viewers that polygamy is a harmless lifestyle and that the AUB was nothing like the FLDS. However, the dark side that was kept secret from viewers is now coming to light.
How to get help: In the U.S., call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 or text START to 88788.
