PARTOUN, USA - Home is a ramshackle collection of trailers and sheds. Meals are served in shifts by "sister-wives" while teams of more than two dozen children do chores and schoolwork. It is not a typical American family and therein lies the problem and a looming court case.
"You have to be very organized," Hannah Bjorkman Green, one of five wives of Tom Green, says matter of factly.
"Every mother will pretty much get her children dressed and ready for the day. We've got one mother cooking all day, one mother tending all day, one mother doing laundry all day. We try and have two mothers go to town each day to work or we telemarket here at home. We rotate doing that." she adds.
Her husband of nine years goes on trial on Monday, the first person prosecuted for polygamy in Utah in nearly 50 years.
"My crime isn't so much being a polygamist in Utah, there are tens of thousands of those, and that's an old Utah tradition. My crime is being a polygamist in Utah that didn't stay in the closet, didn't keep his mouth shut and stay hidden," Green, the father of 29 children, told Reuters earlier this year before a judge clamped a gag orders on all parties in the case.
GOVERNOR'S BROTHER IS PROSECUTOR
The trial has moved from tiny Nephi, Utah to Provo, and will be prosecuted by Juab Count District Attorney David Leavitt, the brother of Utah Gov. Michael Leavitt.
Before he was ever charged, the Green family paraded its polygamist lifestyle before national audiences for more than a decade on programs like "Dateline NBC" and "The Jerry Springer Show," putting under a microscope the little-discussed topic of polygamy.
Now he has been charged with four counts of third-degree felony bigamy and one count of criminal non-support. The felony charges carry a prison term of up to 5 years.
Green, 51, is also charged with first-degree felony rape of a child, for allegedly having sexual relations with a 13 year old girl in 1986, an offense that carries a prison term of 5 years to life. No trial date has been set yet for the rape charge.
The roots of polygamy, the practice of one man taking multiple wives, go to the early days of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as the Mormon church is formally called.
In the mid 1800s Mormons fled persecution in Illinois, crossing the Oregon trail and settling in Utah. But as the area grew and sought statehood, polygamy was banned by the church and members who practice it are ex-communicated.
WORRIED ABOUT GOVERNMENT INTRUSION
Green at times sounds like a civil libertarian. "Does the government have the right to poke their nose in peoples' bedrooms to see who is sleeping with who? What business is that of the government? It's not just an issue of religious freedom of polygamy but it's the issue of freedom of everybody from government interference in their personal lives," he said.
Their homestead, called "Greenhaven" in the western Utah desert is 100 miles (160 km) from the nearest town and reachable only after navigating a string of unmarked dirt and gravel roads. Ironically, Green's appearances on talk shows and news programs may be the unraveling of his own desired quiet lifestyle.
Prosecutors argue Green's public proclamations and marrying and then divorcing the wives is a "scheme" and proof of his guilt.
"It's a civil rights issue," a passionate sounding Green replied. "It's the issue of whether or not women have the right to choose to associate with the man of their choice whether he's associating with someone else or not," he said.
Linda Kunz Green wanted security and stability from Green. "When I got married and started a family I chose a man that I knew would be there forever for my children. And the only thing that I see that the state is doing this is that he's too much of a father," she said.
"I like the association I have with my sister wives and with all of our children. It's a great companionship you couldn't have with anyone else," said another wife, Cari Bjorkman Green, 24.
The upcoming trial troubles Green's wives who say they have gone down on their knees and "begged" God not to let the case proceed.
"If David Leavitt takes Tom away from his family I think that after this life he's going to have to pay for that," Linda Kunz Green said. "And I would not want to be him living his life knowing at the end of this life he was going to have to face judgment for what he did to this family," she said.
18:22 05-11-01
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