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CNN Live Today
Convicted Polygamist Fears Prison's Impact on His Family
Aired June 22, 2001 - 13:28 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DONNA KELLEY, CNN ANCHOR: In Snake Valley, Utah, Tom Green has been building his family. Today he has five wives, 30 children, and soon will face sentencing for openly practicing polygamy.
CNN's John Vause has this report.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: Go!
JOHN VAUSE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): He's fathered 30 children. His youngest, a boy, is less than two weeks old.
TOM GREEN, POLYGAMIST: I sure hope we get to go do some camping and some fishing together. I hope I get to be around to raise you.
VAUSE: He has five wives, another five ex-wives, and soon Tom Green may be going to jail. The first man in 50 years found guilty of polygamy.
(on camera): What happens if you go to jail? What happens to this family?
GREEN: That's what bothers me the most. You know, I'm not a drug dealer, I'm not a murderer. Those guys deserves to be taken away from their families because of the other crimes they've committed.
My crime was creating a family and giving my children too many mothers in the eyes of society. And for that, the father has to be taken away from his children. That doesn't make a damn bit of sense to me, and that burns me. I hate it!
VAUSE (voice-over): Green is facing up to 25 years in jail. Convicted on four counts of bigamy and one count of not paying child support. Three of his wives are pregnant, Linda and sisters Hanna and Cari, all due within the next few months.
GREEN: The wives felt like, if I was going to be gone for a long time, they wanted one more chance to have a child before I was -- before they may not have any for a number of years. And it was a tough decision to make.
HANNAH GREEN, TOM GREEN'S WIFE: I guess we'll do what we have to do, and it will be really sad. I think I'm mostly concerned about our teenaged boys, who really need their father home.
GREEN: We're going to come out over here and we're going to clear a big space out there so we can have a baseball field; get out there and knock them and not lose it in the brush.
VAUSE: The family lives on a small, remote property littered with old appliances and furniture, abandoned cars and 21 battered trailers. Seven are used for housing, the rest seem beyond the repair.
Out here temperatures in summer can hit 110. In winter it can drop to below 10 below. They survive on welfare payments and a modest income from telemarketing. The women sell magazine subscriptions over the phone. Green doesn't have a job. The monthly grocery bill alone is $1,500.
(on camera): About five years ago, Tom Green and his family were evicted from their trailer park in Salt Lake City for being a polygamists, so they packed up their belongings and headed here: Snake Valley, in the western desert of Utah. It really is in the middle of nowhere: 60 miles to a paved road, more than 100 miles to a grocery store or hospital.
(voice-over): Green says this is his haven. But life here has not been easy. When they arrived, there was no running water, their trailer homes were badly damaged in a car accident on the trip from Salt Lake. So the family lived in an old barn until it burnt down, killing one child. And the 18-month criminal case has taken a toll, both financially and emotionally.
(on camera): It sounds like it's been a pretty tough five years.
GREEN: Very tough. One thing after another. But, you know, in our religion we learn that blessings come after the trial of your faith. And if you're being tried, it means that God has good things in store for you.
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: We're actually moving.
VAUSE (voice-over): Now, he says, he just wants to live his life, raise his family away from what he calls religious persecution. And chances are, he wouldn't have been prosecuted if he hadn't spoken out, hadn't gone on television -- instead, had just kept quiet like the estimated 30,000 other polygamists in Utah.
David Leavitt was the prosecuting attorney.
DAVID LEAVITT, DISTRICT ATTORNEY: I mean, I didn't know Tom Green existed until I saw him confess to a felony on national television. I didn't prosecute him because he went on TV; the fact that he went on TV was simply the fashion by which I learned about him.
You know, if I -- if a drug dealer confessed to a felony on national television, I think the people would expect that drug dealer to be prosecuted. VAUSE: But Green believes he is singled out only now because Utah wants to avoid the embarrassment of a very vocal polygamist during next year's winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. He says for the past 15 years, he's been on a religious mission to explain polygamy to the world, believing that if people can see a loving, caring family with healthy, happy children, society will eventually accept this way of life.
GREEN: God assured me that if I was willing to stand up for his preferred system of marriage, which is plural marriage, that no matter what happens, he will take care of me and my family.
VAUSE (on camera): And when you say God told you, how?
GREEN: I felt the spirit of God come over me and I heard a voice in my head say to go ahead and do it.
VAUSE (voice-over): Tom Green considers himself a fundamentalist, following the true Mormon faith where polygamy is the way to heaven. The founder of the religion, Joseph Smith, had multiple wives. His successor, Brigham Young was married to 55 women.
(on camera): In the 1800s, Utah applied for statehood six times, each time denied by the U.S. Congress because the Mormons here practiced polygamy. In 1890, the church banned plural marriage, and six years later Utah was admitted to the union.
But many modern-day polygamists say the church's motives back then were political and not religious.
(voice-over): The church declined to be interviewed for this report, but three years ago at a general conference, President Gordon B. Hinckley did address the issue.
GORDON B. HINCKLEY, PRESIDENT, MORMON CHURCH: More than a century ago God clearly revealed unto his prophet Wilford Woodruff that the practice of plural marriage should be discontinued, which means that it is now against the law of God.
VAUSE: Dean May is a professor of history at the University of Utah.
DEAN MAY, UNIVERSITY OF UTAH: Most church members are sort of tolerant of Mormon fundamentalist neighbors who have practiced plural marriage. They don't get upset about it, and don't say, let's go get the police and get these guys out of here because they recognize that their own ancestors were doing the same thing.
LEAVITT: Welfare fraud, child sexual abuse and bigamy is the triple crown of polygamy. And I think that the Tom Green case has a little of all of that, and I don't think Tom Green's alone.
VAUSE: All of Green's wives were in their early teens when they married. Linda was just 14 when she gave birth to their oldest son Melvin.
(on camera): Isn't that too young?
LINDA GREEN, TOM GREEN'S WIFE: Well, for most girls in normal society today, I would say absolutely. But for me it wasn't. I was raised in a different culture than normal American society. And I was a very different person. I believe that I was capable and ready to handle marriage and a family and a household at a very young age. And I think that after being married 15 years and having six children that I've proven that I was old enough to make the decision that I made.
VAUSE (voice-over): Green was married to Linda's mother. At the time, he was her stepfather. But after they divorced, he married Linda. He also married and divorced the mother of Shirley and her sister Leanne.
LEAVITT: When your mother and your father decide, at the age of 13 or 14, that you'll be married to your father, and your stepfather, and then tell you that you will rot in hell unless you abide by that lifestyle, we take away any sense autonomy or any sense of choice, despite the fact that now they stand by him. It's very much similar to the Stockholm syndrome, where the captive takes on the attitude of the captor.
VAUSE (on camera): Are you a predator?
GREEN: No.
VAUSE: Are you a sexual deviant?
GREEN: If I was in this for the sex, I would still be out looking for young women. My wives are in their late 20s to early 30s.
LINDA GREEN: I mean, we came to Tom and we chose him to be our husband and he committed himself to everyone of us to raise a family. He's not -- he didn't do this to gratify sexual lust. He did this to build a family.
GREEN: I didn't indoctrinate them, and I didn't take them. They have been successfully married for 10 to 15 years, which is more than can be said of most marriages in America. They're very happily married.
VAUSE (voice-over): Linda is the head wife. She decides who will spend a night with their husband. They say they're never jealous and are committed to one another.
CARI GREEN, TOM GREEN'S WIFE: I would say that it was just like being married to somebody, only without the lust. We don't desire each other physically, but we really enjoy each other's company and we care about each other and put each other before anything else.
VAUSE (on camera): What do see in him? What's the attraction?
SHIRLEY GREEN, TOM GREEN'S WIFE: Oh, to Tom? Gee, I don't know. A lot of it, chemistry that's unexplainable. And just the fact that before I married Tom, I got to know him. I spent time in his home. I could see what kind of a man he was going to be, how he treated his wives. And I knew he wasn't abusive. I could tell that his -- how he treated his family and that he was very devoted to teaching and training his children. And morals and standards are very important to him.
GREEN (singing): You say it's your birthday?
VAUSE (voice-over): On average, they celebrate a birthday here about every two weeks. Chances are that Tom Green will miss quite a few birthdays in the coming months. If he goes to prison, there will be no conjugal visits, and he'll only be allowed visits from Linda, the only wife legally recognized by the state.
But his greatest fear is that the children will be taken away and put in foster care. Still, his five wives are determined to keep the family together.
They say they'll all be waiting on that small, remote property whenever he's released. And then, they say, they'll continue living their legal lives as polygamists despite the threat of further prosecution.
John Vause, CNN, Snake Valley, Utah.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
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