Bigamy prosecutor aiding convict’s wives

CNN, July 21, 2002
http://www.cnn.com/2002/LAW/07/21/bigamy.prosecutor.ap/index.html

PROVO, Utah (AP) –The prosecutor behind Tom Green’s bigamy convictions is helping Green’s wives and children move from their complex of mobile homes in Utah’s west desert to an apartment closer to the prison where he is serving time.

The wives are loath to accept the offer of help from Juab County Attorney David Leavitt, but they have no choice, said John R. Bucher, Green’s attorney.
(…)

Leavitt is trying to raise money from state and federal programs and private donations for the wives and children to move to Springville, which will make it easier for them to visit Green in prison.

“I’ve always seen Green’s wives and their children as victims, victims of people who sold them into polygamy,” Leavitt said. “They may not see themselves as victims, but I have always seen them as people who are victims.”

Leavitt tried the case in which Green, who has five wives and 31 children, was convicted last year of four counts of bigamy and one count of criminal nonsupport.
(…)

On June 24, Green was convicted of child rape for marrying and conceiving a child with Linda Kunz in Mexico in 1986, when she was 13 and he was 37. She is now the mother of seven of his children.

He is scheduled to be sentenced in that case August 16.

Kunz Green plans to sue Leavitt for declaring her a victim against her will.

Polygamy, advocated by the Mormon church early in its history, is an open secret in Utah and elsewhere in the West, where an estimated 30,000 people practice plural marriage.

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