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ON THE STORY CNN

Gary Tuchman went to the Arizona-Utah border, where families ignore legal and religious bans on polygamy. (BEGIN VIDEO TAPE) GARY TUCHMAN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: They won't allow us inside with the camera, but we can tell you it is very busy, as you might expect. There are many households and you can see there are some angry people here who don't want the camera to be here. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No cameras allowed here. TUCHMAN: (UNINTELLIGIBLE). UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sorry, this is private property. No cameras allowed. (END VIDEO TAPE) (COMMERCIAL BREAK) (BEGIN VIDEO TAPE) TUCHMAN: Would you like to have 10 more wives like your father did? UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sure. Why not? the more the merrier. (END VIDEO TAPE) VELSHI: CNN is ON THE STORY here at the George Washington University in the nation's Capitol. And we are ON THE STORY in Arizona, along the Utah border, where polygamy is common. It's a lifestyle that's been glamorized in a TV series and back in the headlines this week as the FBI named a polygamist leader to its most wanted list. CNN's Gary Tuchman got a rare peek inside the world of one very large family. Here's a look at his report. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) GARY TUCHMAN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A daughter and a mother. CHRISTINE, DAUGHTER, POLYGAMIST: I've never had people make fun- of me, but I don't think they know. TUCHMAN: What they don't know is that daughter Christine lives in 32-bedroom house with many siblings and many mothers. Most polygamists' homes are not this big, but size is a nice luxury to have in these kinds of families. The children are all fathered by one man -- one husband, who, because polygamy is against the law, doesn't feel safe appearing on camera. We gathered a group of polygamists from different families who say as fundamentalist Mormons, God has obligated them to live in pluralistic marriages. (on camera): I mean, when you see women out there who say you guys are just being taken advantage of. PRISCILLA, POLYGAMIST: We say you're being taken advantage of. That's what we would say to them. TUCHMAN: Why? PRISCILLA: Because so many of them don't have a committed relationship. TUCHMAN: Would any of you let your 14-year-old or 15-year-old daughters get married? UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Absolutely not. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No. TUCHMAN: Are any of you ladies at the point where you would not want your husband to take another wife? UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No, absolutely not. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The more, the better. (END VIDEO TAPE) VELSHI: Gary Tuchman, what an interesting, interesting story. He's in Atlanta. I've got a million questions for you, but this is about the audience, so I'm going to -- I'm going to hope some of them ask the questions I've got on my mind. Sir, your name and where you're from? PETE: Hi. I'm Pete. I'm from Chapel Hill, North Carolina. I was wondering if the people you talked to, are they very open in talking about their polygamist lifestyle or did you kind of have to drag that information out of them? TUCHMAN: Well, Pete, it was very hard to get this interview because, frankly, most polygamists don't trust the news media. So we worked on it for weeks, to try to get this interview nailed down. And, finally, when we sat down with them, we were surprised at how easy it was to talk with them. They think their lifestyle is the most normal lifestyle in the world. As a matter of fact, a couple of the women said to me, we feel badly for you that you only have one wife. I mean they really, genuinely think this is normal. But they do know they're certainly in the minority in this country. VELSHI: Did you, when you got back, Gary, had you been thinking about that on the plane ride back and feeling badly for yourself that you just have one wife? TUCHMAN: I told my wife when I came back that I did not bring back any other wives. It's still just her. VELSHI: All right, thank you. Another audience question for u. Ma'am, your name and where you're from? JANE: Jane from Washington, D.C. I was wondering if there is any research that has looked at whether the children of polygamists are more likely to become polygamists themselves? And, also, could you share any of your observations regarding the children? TUCHMAN: Well, Jane, this one house that we were just in that you saw that had 32 bedrooms, they didn't want to tell us for security reasons exactly how many wives and how many children were in the house. But they gave us a range. They said it's between 10 and 15 wives and between 30 and 40 children. And they say because there are so many women in the house, that the children always have attention. But the fact is that there's only one man, one father. And it's hard enough when you two or three or four kids for a father to give them individual attention and no one is kidding themselves there that it's impossible for this father to give each of these 30 to 40 kids individual attention. And the fact is that these kids are raised to become polygamists. But in the story you just saw, that one 17-year-old young lady we talked to, she told us she wasn't 100 percent sure she was going to be a polygamist. She wanted to think about it. So, not everyone stays polygamist when they're in a polygamist family, but the parents certainly want them to. ENSOR: Well, here's a guy question for you, Gary. How does he pay for all of this? TUCHMAN: David, what they do is most of the wives work, too. So you don't have a situation where you have only one breadwinner, one earner in the family. Most of the wives have jobs where they get paid. Now, an obvious question, that house is not typical, OK? There's a lot of big houses in Colorado City, Arizona and Hildale, Utah, because there are big families. Most of them, though, are put together very haphazardly. This one, obviously, was a beautiful, beautiful home. So what does that gentleman do? The family would not tell us for security reasons. They didn't feel safe in telling us, so we don't know exactly what he does. VELSHI: Another question. Sir, your name and where you're from? GIDEON: Hi. I'm Gideon from Sante Fe, New Mexico. And I was just wondering how polygamists' families are getting away with having multiple marriages. TUCHMAN: Well, what happens in most cases -- and this is very interesting -- is that the first marriage that the husband has, they get an official marriage certificate. But then each subsequent marriage, they don't get marriage certificates. So in the eyes of the state, they're not officially married. But in the eyes of the fundamentalist Mormon movement, they are. So therefore the state -- and I talked to the Arizona attorney general about this. He actually was in Colorado City the day I was there earlier this week. And he said no, technically, from a legal standpoint, they can't arrest them, because they're not officially married more than once. But for, ostensibly, for all purposes, they are married multiple times. SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Gary, for the ladies, some of the ladies, is there ever any talk of multiple husbands? TUCHMAN: Suzanne, I asked that question. I said, "Can you do that if you want to? Can you marry multiple husbands?" And they told us yes, we can do that. And this is very important, that I must point out. These people we interviewed are right next to Colorado City, where most of Warren Jeffs' followers live. However, they are not Jeffs' followers. They moved to this town of Centennial Park, which is only two miles away, to get away from the Jeffs family. They didn't want what they call a dictator leading them. So they are more liberal. So technically they say yes, we can have multiple husbands. But we still -- our religious background wouldn't allow this. The only way we go to heaven is to allow our husband to marry multiple women. We would not do that for religious reasons. But we could do that if we wanted to leave the religion we believe in. VELSHI: A truly fascinating story. Gary, thanks for being with us. Gary Tuchman in Atlanta. TUCHMAN: Thank you.

CNN.com Originally broadcast May 13, 2006

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