Green will be paroled next week

By this time next week, Tom Green will be a free man.

The Utah Board of Pardons and Parole has decided to release the polygamist from prison on Aug. 7, with new terms for his parole.

"The reports we received from the prison: He did well in sex-offender therapy," parole board spokesman Jim Hatch said Wednesday. "We certainly didn't see any reason why he should lose his date."

As part of his release, Green has been ordered to undergo more mental-health therapy. He must also have no contact with one of his former wives or her family. The only exception could be when he visits the children he has with her. The polygamist has also been ordered to pay $34,420 in restitution for a criminal non-support conviction.

Green was called before the parole board on July 17 after Adult Probation and Parole agents raised questions about the polygamist's living conditions once he gets out. Green still has four "wives," but vowed that he would only be living with one of them — his legal wife, Linda.

"These other mothers of my children live in their own houses, and I will never be living with them, so I will never be guilty of bigamy," Green said during his hearing at the Utah State Prison.

However, parole officers said Green's other wives live in attached homes. Parole board member Keith Hamilton questioned if the state had any business on whom Green sleeps with.

Hatch said the parole board felt that if any laws were being broken while Green was out, parole officers could seek a warrant to have him thrown back in prison.

"I guess we're looking at it as an ongoing process," Hatch said. "Once he's settled — however that may be — if they have concerns that he's violating the law with the way he's living, they can express those concerns to the board."

Green has already served five years in prison for bigamy and criminal non-support. At the time of his conviction, he had five wives and more than 30 children and was accused of being a "deadbeat dad" by not providing adequate financial support for them.

One of Green's wives left him when he went to prison.

Green is now serving a sentence for rape of a child, stemming from his marriage to his wife Linda when she was just 13 years old.

---

E-mail: bwinslow@desnews.com