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Life on and off the compound: Leaving polygamy

Alisha and Ashlyn

Alisha Weigle was born into a family of 46 children, with three mothers, and a father, in the Colorado City polygamous compound in Arizona.

"I was one of the few that went away and went to college in Cedar City," Alisha said. "I got a degree in education, but I also got my eyes opened in a big way as to what the real world was."

When she returned to the compound, she married a stranger, and raised a small family with him. After he was ex-communicated, she made the decision to take her children and leave the compound.

Ashlyn Weigle was 10 years old when her mother told her they were going on vacation, and to pack and get in the car. Her father was not coming.

He just looked at me and then he walked away, and that's when I realized there was something else that was going on.

Shalayne Smith Needham has worked at Utah Public Radio since 2000 as producer of Access Utah. She graduated from Utah State University in 1997 with a BA in Sociology, emphasis on Criminology. A Logan native, she grew up with an appreciation for the great outdoors and spends her free time photographing the Western landscape and its wildlife.