Man with five wives and 29 children to go on trial

Tom Green believes it’s his outspoken nature more than his polygamist lifestyle that has led to his prosecution in Utah’s first high-profile bigamy case in 50 years.

‘‘You stick your head out of the hole, the Government will shoot it off,’’ said Green, 52, who lives with his five wives and 29 children near Trout Creek, 125 miles southwest of Salt Lake City.

Green has defended his lifestyle on TV shows and held news conferences despite a judge’s warning not to do so.

His high profile caught the attention of Juab County Prosecutor David Leavitt, who will try him on bigamy charges. Jury selection was to begin today. Green could get 25 years in prison if convicted on all counts.

Green believes he is being singled out.

‘‘That’s been the unwritten rule for 50 years in Utah,’’ Green said. ‘‘You’ll pretend you don’t exist and we’ll pretend you don’t exist.’’

In addition to the Government, Green blames the Mormon church, saying a professor from church-owned Brigham Young University helped prosecutors.

Green is also facing a charge of child rape stemming from his relationship with one of his wives when she was 13.

Until the 1950s, polygamists were periodically imprisoned. Some settled along the Arizona border, which they would cross when one of the states launched a raid.

The last of those raids was carried out simultaneously by Arizona and Utah authorities. The incident backfired when the public, enraged by images of families being torn apart, protested and prosecutors backed off.

There are now an estimated 30,000 polygamists living in the West, most of them in Utah, and the practice is once again being criticised, in many cases by women who fled plural marriages.

The critics of the practice say that the polygamists’ patriarchal societies foster child abuse, incest and because few practitioners can afford to support their enormous families welfare fraud.

Polygamy arrived in Utah in the 1840s, when members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints settled in the state. Mormon leaders believed the practice was required by God because some Old Testament prophets took multiple wives.

But outside the church, the practice was condemned. The church disavowed polygamy in 1890. As a condition of statehood, the practice was prohibited in the Utah Constitution.