‘Sister Wives’: Highlights from Robyn Brown’s Infamous ‘Purity’ Speech
In Sister Wives Season 6, Episode 6, ‘Robyn’s Secret,’ Robyn Brown gives the now infamous speech about purity that left fans speechless. Here are the highlights from Robyn’s controversial speech to the Brown children.
Robyn tells her children that their virginity is ‘prized above all jewels’
The Browns are followers of the fundamentalist Mormon sect, the Apostolic United Brethren (AUB), and after their move to Las Vegas, they had no church to attend. So they held Sunday services in Meri Brown’s living room.
Kody Brown asked his fourth wife, Robyn, to give a lesson during church in their living room about the law of chastity. “I’m actually going to speak to the kids about the biggest mistake of my life.” Robyn was “nervous” about telling the kids.
Robyn held a locket to symbolize a person’s “purity.” She explained, “You have this purity, and this purity has to do with your body. And this purity has to do with your mind and has to do with your heart. And it is very, very, very precious. It is prized about all jewels.”
She encouraged the Brown children to save their purity for marriage with the right person. Robyn told the story of a girl who “took care of her purity” by saving her virginity for marriage.
“She knew how valuable it was. And so when she found the right man, she was able to hand him her purity and say, ‘This is yours. And this is the most ultimate gift, and it is yours,'” she says as she hands the locket to Kody.
Robyn had premarital sex with her first husband
Throughout her teenage years, Robyn considered herself a “good girl” and abstained from all kissing and sexual relationships. When she moved to Montana at the ripe age of 19, Robyn lost the foundation of her faith. She said she became “rebellious,” stopped attending church, and started dating someone. That person turned out to be her first husband, David Jessop.
“There was only one thing that he wanted,” Robyn said. “So I got pregnant,” she said about her pregnancy with her first child, Dayton Brown.
Using the locket as a symbol of her virginity, Robyn explained the damaging effects of giving it to her first husband before marriage. She tells the Brown children about a girl who didn’t give her purity to the right person, referring to herself.
“One girl, she took her purity, and she gave it to someone who begged for it. And he begged for it, and he begged for it. So she gave it away. She gave away her purity. And he didn’t respect it. He threw it on the ground. He broke it,” she said while throwing the locket on the carpet.
Robyn says getting pregnant with Dayton out of wedlock was the biggest’ mistake’ of her life
In the interview, Robyn explained how she felt about getting pregnant out of wedlock with Dayton. “You know, when I found out I was pregnant, I was devastated at that point. I was really scared. I was scared of all of my family rejecting me; I was scared of what my church was gonna say,” she told the cameras.
But she said she thought it was “important” to “take responsibility” for her actions, and she said yes when he proposed marriage to her. And Robyn stayed in her marriage to David for nine years and had two more children, Breanna and Aurora.
“She spent her whole life trying to get it back, but you only have one. And it broke her heart. And she spend her whole life being sad about it,” she told the Brown children through tears.
Then she revealed her regret for not saving her “purity” for her husband, Kody. “When she finally found the guy she was supposed to be with, she had to go to him and say, ‘Look, I gave away my purity to someone else. He kind of stole it from me. And this was supposed to be yours. But I gave it to someone else, and I’m so sorry.’ And it broke her heart,” Robyn cried.
‘Sister Wives’ fans react to Robyn’s ’embarrassing’ purity speech
Many SIster Wives fans believe that Robyn’s speech plays into the damaging “purity culture” that many ex-polygamist children have to unlearn. Most Sister Wives fans think it’s not only detrimental to call her first marriage “the biggest mistake” of her life, considering her first three children resulted from the marriage. Many Sister Wives fans call the speech “embarrassing” and “cringe.” Check out the clip below (via Reddit):
One fan said (via Reddit), “For her to stand there and cry and talk about the loss of her own ‘purity’ and the supposed heartache it caused her is oversharing and putting way too much of a burden on children, especially the young children who were probably so confused. Won’t even get into how traumatic this must have been for Dayton.” They called her speech “another ‘poor me’ performance by Robyn.”
New episodes of Sister Wives Season 17 air Sundays at 10 p.m. ET on TLC.
