This man escaped the polygamous sect he grew up in, and started life from scratch.
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00:00I have 29 siblings. My mom is my world, but dad will not allow them to talk to me because I'm an apostate.
00:11When I left the FLDS, I was 17 years old. I couldn't completely agree with everything they were teaching.
00:35If you were caught talking to the neighbor girl, or if you were caught talking to the neighbor girl,
01:04or if you were caught looking at her for too long, then you were in trouble.
01:10Say my dad gets a call from Warren Jeffs. He's the only one that could ever do marriages there.
01:17I go to his office, and this random girl walks in the door. I'd never talked to her. I'd seen her from a distance.
01:23I walk in, and I get married to this girl. And from then on out, we've got to figure life out.
01:29I didn't want that lifestyle for myself, and so I walked out the door at 17.
01:35I couldn't really say goodbye to anyone or things like that, because if I did, I knew I wouldn't be able to walk out the door on my family.
02:00Since I left the FLDS, it's been, I mean, it's kind of been my lifeline.
02:13The haircuts in the FLDS where I grew up, I mean, the style I have now isn't allowed.
02:23They grow their hair out most of their life, and then they braid it, and they put it up on top of their head, and that's kind of their culture.
02:29So a big significance for them is when they come in and we cut their hair, it's really starting their new path, because they can't look back after that.
02:40It's almost a liberation of style for them, and it gives them a new lease on life.
02:45If you notice with Howard, I mean, once he got his haircut, he started to open up in a completely different way.
02:50Getting my first haircut after I left the FLDS, I mean, it made me feel like I was somebody different.
03:05There's been ups and downs like everybody has, but it's been really good, really good so far in the past two years.