COLORADO CITY, Ariz. (AP) — The prairie dresses, walled compounds and distrust of outsiders that were once hallmarks of two towns on the Arizona-Utah border are mostly gone.
These days, Colorado City, Arizona, and neighboring Hildale, Utah, look much like any other town in this remote and picturesque area near Zion National Park, with weekend soccer games, a few bars, and even a winery.
Until courts wrested control of the towns from a polygamous sect whose leader and prophet, Warren Jeffs, was imprisoned for sexually assaulting two girls, youth sports, cocktail hours and many other common activities were forbidden. The towns have transformed so quickly that they were released from court-ordered supervision last summer, almost two years earlier than expected.
It wasn’t easy.
“What you see is the outcome of a massive amount of internal turmoil and change within people to reset themselves,” said Willie Jessop, a onetime spokesman for the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints who later broke with the sect. “We call it ‘life after Jeffs’ — and, frankly, it’s a great life.”
A dark turn
Some former members have fond memories of growing up in the FLDS, describing mothers who looked out for each other’s kids and playing sports with other kids in town.
But they say things got worse after Jeffs took charge following his father’s death in 2002. Families were broken apart by church leaders who cast out …