Tom Green's 30th child has just been born. He is, appropriately enough, to be named after his father's lawyer, John Richard Boucher, because it is his job to ensure that Green does not watch his son growing up from behind prison bars. Green is America's best-known polygamist, a man who has claimed that he is being persecuted by the state because of his convictions. Earlier this summer, he was found guilty by a jury of four counts of bigamy and one count of failure to pay child support. Today the judge will decide whether he spends up to the next 25 years of his life in Utah state prison.
If what this 52-year-old former Mormon missionary, dry-cleaner and telemarketer wanted was to put the issue of polygamy on to the national agenda, he can certainly claim to have achieved that. Now the state that will be hosting the world's media in February when Salt Lake City holds the Winter Olympics is waiting to see what punishment will be meted out to the man who claims that he is merely following the original tenets of the Mormon church by taking multiple wives and fathering enough children to stage a 15-a-side family rugby match. If Green receives a long sentence, it will be up to his five wives, Linda, Lee Ann, Shirley, Hannah and Cari to bring up the 26 children living on the family encampment 200 miles south of Salt Lake City.
Before the trial, talking over a jug of pink lemonade in the trailer that acts as dining-room and meeting-place, Linda, Hannah and Shirley had been resigned to a guilty verdict but were still hoping Green would escape prison. Now they are uncertain what to expect.
"Right now we're numb," says Linda. She describes herself as "the CEO" of the family in that she organises the day to day telemarketing business they run from a trailer. She also coordinates which of the five wives "spends time" with Green. "When the verdict came in the children were pretty upset and now they're not sure what to expect. All we can hope for is a light sentence or probation. If he does go to prison it will be a struggle."
Hannah is hoping the judge will choose the lowest end of the scale for sentencing. "Most of the children know what is happening," she says. One has written to the judge saying that he has nightmares in which his father has gone to prison. "I'm not sure if the little ones know what is happening. Their teachers say they have noticed a difference in them."
Green's 10-year-old daughter, Sierra Sahara, explains to me who is who in the family and how they operate. "That's Benjamin Franklin," she says, pointing to a small boy blowing bubbles. There, too, was Thomas Jefferson and Brigham Young, the latter being the name of one of the founders of the church who was himself arrested back in 1871 for "lewd and lascivious cohabitation" with his 16 wives.
So what kind of a life do the children and wives lead? Many of the youngsters attend the local school and some of the boys are in the Scouts. There is no television but they go to the movies and watch videos: Braveheart, The Matrix and The Patriot are favourites. The former chimes with Green's fascination with Scotland, from where his forebears came, and the latter tells the tale of a man with many children, played by Mel Gibson, who fights for his beliefs. The younger children watch animated Biblical stories. The music played around the encampment is, says Linda, mainly the Beatles, early rock'n'roll and some Celtic music but no rap or heavy metal. As a treat, Green plays the children music by Led Zeppelin.
As for the wives, Hannah has just run the Las Vegas marathon while two months pregnant, Cari is doing some construction work, and LeeAnn is looking at her portfolio with a view to launching a career as a model for a clothes catalogue. There are two sets of sisters among the five sister-wives, their origins Scottish and Scandinavian. Linda, who is pregnant again, says their real dream is to live in a castle in Scotland. She asks if they would be accepted there. Shirley says that one of the advantages is that the children have five different mothers, thus increasing the chances that one mother would be able to help them with a problem, although the children are not allowed, having been told they cannot do something by one mother, to go for a second opinion.
What the Green case involves is the fraught issue of church and state. The first amendment clearly states that: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof " and while many people may have little sympathy with Green and little affection or admiration for the Mormon church, they would also say that his prosecution runs close to a breach of the first amendment. It is on the subject of religion that the case has caused divisions.
The prosecutor, Juab County attorney David Leavitt - who is also the governor's brother - comes, like many in Utah, from polygamist stock and is the great-grandson of polygamists. In 1993, he agreed to defend a polygamist with three wives on a similar charge, although the case never reached court. "I thought I knew the culture and, if they are not hurting anyone, why bug them," he says. But he believes he was right to pursue Green's case. "I became firmly convinced that this was a guy who had to go down because of what he was doing under the name of religion. I saw a man who was seriously hurting people - marrying 13- and 14-year-old girls and sucking the welfare system dry."
Yesterday Leavitt said that he had already determined what sentence he was going to seek but would not disclose it until he was in court. Of Green's claims that Leavitt had offered to drop the charges if he would just shut up, he said: "He's a master at taking a portion of the truth and twisting it . . . To me, any man who takes a 13-year-old girl and impregnates her ought to be prosecuted."
And here is the other crucial issue. For while many might defend Green's right to have as many wives as are prepared to be with him, there is far greater concern about the very young age at which his wives - and other wives in the polygamous community - married: in their early teens. Linda, who had her her first child by Green at the age of 14, says she knew her mind, had fallen in love and thought, "Why wait?" She says that all the five wives are still in harmony after more than 10 years of being together and, if they were not, they would feel free to leave. She knows of bad polygamous marriages - "I've seen families where there is jealousy and bitterness" - but says the remedy is for the wives of those marriages to leave.
"It was never sexually motivated [for Green]. It wasn't, 'Gee, I'd like to have a lot of young wives'," says Linda. "He was in a monogamous marriage before and he lost his three children [when he became a polygamist.] He feels God has blessed him tenfold for his sacrifice." She says that her own grandparents had been jailed for polygamy and that all of the "sister-wives" had families that had experienced jail or prosecution for their religious beliefs.
Other former wives of polygamous marriages take a far less rosy view of polygamy than do Green's. Tapestry Against Polygamy was formed by six ex-wives to campaign against the practice and free young girls, as they saw it, from the bondage of a multiple marriage.
They greeted Green's conviction with a collective cry of "Hallelujah!" saying that the prosecution was an important one because it sent a message to men who might otherwise try to marry young, impressionable girls from polygamous families and deprive them of their childhood, schooling and independence. Since there are some 30,000 other members of polygamous families in the state, there is trepidation in the quiet desert retreats where they have established themselves that Green's trial may be the first of many. Leavitt says that while there is a limit to what he could do with "one and a half attorneys", he expects other prosecutions. (The Greens say they want their own children to obey the law and thus not get married until they are 18.)
Now that the prison gates might be about to close on Green, does Linda have second thoughts about choosing to fight this battle so publicly? "We absolutely don't have any regrets at all," she says. She and the other wives and some of the children will be in court in Provo for the sentence tomorrow. Green says that he, too, had no regrets.
In 1844, the Mormon leader and polygamist Joseph Smith, was jailed in Carthage, Illinois, for destroying the press and offices of a Mormon paper that opposed polygamy. When it appeared that he might be freed by the governor, a mob attacked the jail and killed him and his brother. Green is likely to be granted better protection if he is led off to jail.