{"id":17614,"date":"2016-02-22T09:00:14","date_gmt":"2016-02-22T17:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/efforts-intensify-to-curtail-child-marriage-in-the-us\/"},"modified":"2016-02-22T09:00:14","modified_gmt":"2016-02-22T17:00:14","slug":"efforts-intensify-to-curtail-child-marriage-in-the-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/efforts-intensify-to-curtail-child-marriage-in-the-us\/","title":{"rendered":"Efforts intensify to curtail child marriage in the US"},"content":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK<\/strong> \u2014 Child marriage wasn\u2019t an issue of note for Virginia state Sen. Jill Vogel until she heard the stories circulating in her district about a man in his early 50s marrying a girl in her mid-teens, warding off a police investigation of his relationship with her.<\/p>\n

Now Vogel is lead sponsor of a bill advancing in Virginia\u2019s legislature that would sharply curtail child marriage.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur marriage laws in Virginia are not protecting children,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

A similar measure has been introduced in Maryland, and a pending bill in New York goes even further \u2014 it would make the state the first to ban marriage altogether for anyone under 18.<\/p>\n

Worldwide, child marriage is a reality for millions of girls. Though the practice is most common in developing countries, critics who argue it exposes many girls to emotional and even physical harm say it poses a largely unseen threat in the United States as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe think we\u2019re so sophisticated, so progressive and ahead of the times, and yet we still see this barbaric behavior,\u201d said Assemblywoman Amy Paulin, sponsor of the bill in New York.<\/p>\n

Across the U.S., states laws generally set 18 as the minimum age for marriage, yet every state allows some exceptions. Most states let 16- and 17-year-olds marry if they have parental consent, and several states \u2014 including New York, Virginia and Maryland \u2014 allow children under 16 to marry if a court official gives approval.<\/p>\n

There are no nationwide statistics on child marriage in the U.S., but data from a few states suggests it is far from rare.<\/p>\n

Fraidy Reiss, who campaigns against coerced marriage as head of a nonprofit called Unchained at Last, researched data from her home state of New Jersey, and determined that 3,499 minors \u2014 90 percent of them girls \u2014 were married in the state between 1995 and 2012, including 178 who were under 15.<\/p>\n

In New York State, according to Reiss, 3,853 minors were married between 2000 and 2010. Her figures are drawn from state health department data.<\/p>\n

In Virginia, state health statistics show that more than 4,500 minors were married between 2000 and 2013, including about 220 who were 15 or younger.<\/p>\n

Such data \u201cshould set off alarm bells, not wedding bells,\u201d said Jeanne Smoot, senior counsel for policy with the Tahirih Justice Center in Falls Church, Virginia, which assists women at risk of domestic violence, trafficking and forced marriage.<\/p>\n

Reiss \u2014 who says she was forced into an abusive marriage by her Orthodox Jewish family when she was 19 \u2014 contends that cases of child marriage via parental consent often involve coercion, with a girl forced to marry against her will. She says states generally do not require any investigation of this possibility, and girls are often not asked if they are marrying voluntarily.<\/p>\n

Inspired by Reiss\u2019 efforts, Paulin, the New York legislator, introduced a bill in January that would eliminate all exceptions in New York\u2019s statutes and prohibit the marriage of anyone under 18. Paulin, a Democrat, believes her bill can get bipartisan support and become law.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust because we\u2019re not talking about millions of girls here in the U.S. doesn\u2019t mean we shouldn\u2019t protect the thousands of girls who are affected,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Reiss has been in touch with lawmakers in New Jersey, hoping for similar legislation there.<\/p>\n

\u201cMostly the response is, \u2018I can\u2019t believe this is happening in my state. We have to stop it,\u2019\u201d Reiss said.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the Tahirih Justice Center is working with legislators in Virginia to enact a law barring all under-18 marriages except for cases where 16- or 17-year-olds acquire the rights of an adult via an emancipation order freeing them from the control of their parents or guardians.<\/p>\n

Vogel, the Virginia senator, said she chose to push for the legislation because of a case roiling the town of Middleburg in her North Virginia district.<\/p>\n

According to Vogel, it had become common knowledge in the community that a man in his early 50s was having a relationship with a girl in her mid-teens. To ward off further scrutiny by authorities, the man obtained the consent of the girl\u2019s mother and married the girl last year, Vogel said. She declined to identify those involved, for privacy reasons.<\/p>\n

Under her bill, that type of marriage would no longer be an option \u2014 the girl would have to convince a judge that she should be legally emancipated and that the marriage was in her best interest.<\/p>\n

The measure, which would end Virginia\u2019s practice of allowing girls under 16 to get married if they are pregnant, cleared the Senate on Feb. 9 by a 33-7 vote. One opponent, Sen. John Edwards, argued that parents should retain the right to decide if their children under the age of 18 should get married.<\/p>\n

The measure has now moved the Virginia\u2019s House of Delegates. The lead sponsor in that chamber, Jennifer McClellan, said her grandmother got married at age 14 in rural Mississippi.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople didn\u2019t understand back then that children aren\u2019t ready to have children,\u201d McClellan said. \u201cNow we understand all the negative consequences.\u201d<\/p>\n

She\u2019s heard no objections to the bill from prominent immigrants hailing from countries where child marriage is a centuries-old tradition. Some families in those countries feel that marrying off their daughters will protect them from sexual assault; some poor families take the step to reduce child-raising expenses or to obtain a payment known as a \u201cbride price.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the United States, some immigrant families have retained those traditions of child marriage. In some cases, parents disapprove of someone their daughter is dating, and pressure her to marry someone they view as more suitable.<\/p>\n

However, child marriage in America extends far beyond immigrant communities; it\u2019s been a longstanding practice in certain cases where a girl becomes pregnant and there\u2019s a desire that the child have married parents.<\/p>\n

In Virginia, where girls under 16 can get married in cases of pregnancy, some of the age differences are striking. In 2010, a girl under 15 married a man in his 30s; another girl under 15 married a man in his 50s in 2006, state records say.<\/p>\n

The health department records give no further details \u2014 they do not identify the court officials who approved the marriages or give any indication whether there was an investigation into the circumstances of the girl\u2019s pregnancy.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s haunting for us, looking at this data,\u201d said Casey Carter Swegman, project manager of Tahirih\u2019s Forced Marriage Initiative. \u201cWe want to reach out to those girls and at least find out if they\u2019re OK, and who the judge was, and we\u2019ve been told there\u2019s no way to find out more.\u201d<\/p>\n

Occasionally, details of child marriages emerge in news accounts.<\/p>\n

In 2005, there was widespread coverage of a Nebraska couple \u2014 Crystal and Matthew Koso \u2014 who married when she was 14 and he was 22. Because Crystal had become pregnant before the marriage, Matthew served 15 months in prison and had to register as a sex offender.<\/p>\n

In 2011, 16-year-old Courtney Stodden, an aspiring singer and actress, married 51-year-old Doug Hutchinson, an actor known for his film role as a prison guard in \u201cThe Green Mile.\u201d The couple\u2019s subsequent ups and downs have been chronicled in celebrity-oriented media; Hutchinson told interviewers he had been denounced as a pedophile and targeted with death threats.<\/p>\n

For the most part, though, child marriage in the U.S. has escaped intensive scrutiny.<\/p>\n

Tahirih\u2019s goal is to get legislation passed in every state that would virtually eliminate child marriage.<\/p>\n

Worldwide, according to UNICEF, there are more than 700 million women who were married before 18. Numerous studies have concluded that the practice is detrimental to girls\u2019 health, education and economic opportunities, and increases their vulnerability to abuse and violence.<\/p>\n

Among those in the U.S. working to curtail child marriage is a 26-year-old New Yorker, Naila Amin, who had her own harrowing experience with the practice.<\/p>\n

Amin says her parents, who brought her to the U.S. as a 4-year-old, grew wary of her American-style social life when she entered her teens and the ensuing friction led to her being placed in foster care. When Amin ran away from foster care and returned to her family, they took to her to Pakistan as a 15-year-old and forced her to marry a 28-year-old cousin who beat and mistreated her.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the next few months, I cooked, cleaned and slept with my husband \u2014 my enemy,\u201d Amin wrote in an account of her ordeal.<\/p>\n

Thanks to the intervention of an uncle, and the fact that Amin was still technically a ward of the foster care system, she was able to get out of the marriage and return to the U.S. She\u2019s now attending Nassau Community College on Long Island, with hopes of becoming a social worker and opening a group home for girls trying to avoid or recover from forced marriages.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was alone when I faced my marriage,\u201d she says. \u201cI want to be there for other girls.\u201d<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Online<\/p>\n

UNICEF background information: http:\/\/www.unicef.org\/protection\/57929_58008.html<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

David Crary can be reached at dcrary@ap.org and is on Twitter at http:\/\/twitter.com\/CraryAP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK \u2014 Child marriage wasn\u2019t an issue of note for Virginia state Sen. Jill Vogel until she heard the stories circulating in her district about a man in his early 50s marrying a girl in her mid-teens, warding off a police investigation of his relationship with her. Now Vogel is lead sponsor of a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":17615,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[65],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-17614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-nation-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17614\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17614"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=17614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}