SALT LAKE CITY, USA - The wives and children of a convicted bigamist who faces up to 25 years in prison have asked a judge to spare him time behind bars when he is sentenced on Friday.
"Please don't put our father in prison," 10-year-old Lorin Green said in a letter to Judge Guy Burningham that was included in a pre-sentencing report. "We really need him. We love him very much. He needs to take care of us."
"Please don't take my father away," 11-year-old Sierra Green wrote.
Their father, Tom Green, 53, was convicted in May of four counts of felony bigamy for living with his five current wives and 25 children in a remote desert compound near the Utah-Nevada line. He was also found guilty of one count of failure to pay child support.
The avowed polygamist has said in interviews that having more than one wife has been a belief in his Mormon culture for more than 150 years and that he would not abandon it -- even if sentenced to a long prison term.
"I don't know how you can legislate against someone's beliefs," Green, who is appealing his conviction, said in a May interview with ABC's "Good Morning America" program.
"Tom's children are very close to him. I believe they would suffer emotionally and mentally by his being taken away," wrote wife Linda Green, who also expressed concern over what message it would send the children.
"I worry that our children will learn to disrespect government for generations to come because of having their father sent to prison for his religious beliefs," she said in the letter.
Wife Cari Bjorkman Green wrote the judge asking him to "search your heart" and asked if society would be better off "with this father, husband and teacher locked away?"
Bjorkman Green ended her letter by writing, "Tom is a good man, his children need him, his wives need him there to support them and to raise his children. Please do not make us single mothers."
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as the Mormon religion is formally known, banned the practice of polygamy in the 1890s.
The prosecution argued that Green married women in their teens and then divorced them, but continued living with them while collecting welfare.
Among those showing support for Green in letters to the judge were his family's doctor, school officials and a scout leader.
15:28 08-21-01
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