11 Years Old, a Mom, and Pushed to Marry Her Rapist in Florida
Nicholas Kristof MAY 26, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/26/opinion/sunday/it-was-forced-on-me-child-marriage-in-the-us.html?mc=adglobal&mcid=facebook&subid1=sectiondiversitytest&ad-keywords=auddevgate&mccr=opinionopinion
When she was a scrawny 11-year-old, Sherry Johnson found out one day that she was about to be married to a 20-year-old member of her church who had raped her.
“It was forced on me,” she recalls. She had become pregnant, she says, and child welfare authorities were investigating — so her family and church officials decided the simplest way to avoid a messy criminal case was to organize a wedding.
“My mom asked me if I wanted to get married, and I said, ‘I don’t know, what is marriage, how do I act like a wife?’” Johnson remembers today, many years later. “She said, ‘Well, I guess you’re just going to get married.’”
So she was. A government clerk in Tampa, Fla., refused to marry an 11-year-old, even though this was legal in the state, so the wedding party went to nearby Pinellas County, where the clerk issued a marriage license. The license (which I’ve examined) lists her birth date, so officials were aware of her age.
Not surprisingly, the marriage didn’t work out — two-thirds of marriages of underage girls don’t last, one study found — but it did interrupt Johnson’s attendance at elementary school. Today she is campaigning for a state law to curb underage marriages, part of a nationwide movement to end child marriage in America. Meanwhile, children 16 and under are still being married in Florida at a rate of one every few days.
Continue reading the main story
Nicholas Kristof
Human rights, women’s rights, health, global affairs.
If Americans Love Moms, Why Do We Let Them Die? JUL 29
No Insurance, but for 3 Days, Health Care Is Within Reach JUL 27
Jared Kushner’s Got Too Many Secrets to Keep Ours JUL 22
If Dr. Trump Were Your Surgeon ... JUL 20
A Solution When a Nation’s Schools Fail JUL 15
Recent Comments
merrytrare
May 30, 2017
Forcing an 11 year old girl to get married because she was raped and as a result became pregnant is just so wrong. This is child abuse.
Johanna Clearfield
May 30, 2017
Somehow the lead her is buried. Forget about child marriage as the central theme here, all I can see are young girls being raped. And,...
Steve W
May 28, 2017
Child marriage is a consequence of the root problem, that being people who think being raped shames the woman -- pardon me, in this case I...
- See All Comments
You’re thinking: “Child marriage? That’s what happens in Bangladesh or Tanzania, not America!”
The Landscape of Child Marriage
Idaho had the most married children on a per-capita basis among states that provided data; Texas led in sheer numbers of children married. Based on state records covering 11 years, 2000 to 2010.
Married per
10,000 residents:
Fewer than
10 minors
10 to 19
D.C.
More than 20
Data not
available
Minors who married in 38 states that provided records, 2000-10
34,793
14,278
11,657
7,688
7,670
7,019
6,775
6,328
6,262
4,532
4,501
4,386
4,245
4,240
4,177
4,154
Texas
Fla.
Ky.
Ala.
Tenn.
Ark.
Va.
Ill.
Mo.
La.
S.C.
Utah
Mich.
Miss.
Ohio
Colo.
4,083
3,850
3,336
2,780
2,759
2,677
2,503
2,488
1,831
1,081
1,050
1,030
982
956
654
647
622
405
231
207
200
156
Idaho
N.Y.
Wash.
Ore.
W. Va.
Md.
Kan.
Wis.
N.J.
Iowa
Mass.
Wyo.
Conn.
Neb.
Alaska
S.D.
Hawaii
Mont.
N.D.
Vt.
Del.
N.H.
Per-capita figures based on the average of each state’s population in 2000 and 2010.
Source: Unchained at Last
By The New York Times
In fact, more than 167,000 young people age 17 and under married in 38 states between 2000 and 2010, according to a search of available marriage license data by a group called Unchained at Last, which aims to ban child marriage. The search turned up cases of 12-year-old girls married in Alaska, Louisiana and South Carolina, while other states simply had categories of “14 and younger.”
Unchained at Last was not able to get data for the other states. But it extrapolated that in the entire country, there were almost 250,000 child marriages between 2000 and 2010. Some backing for that estimate comes from the U.S. Census Bureau, which says that at least 57,800 Americans age 15 to 17 reported being in marriages in 2014.
Among the states with the highest rates of child marriages were Arkansas, Idaho and Kentucky. The number of child marriages has been falling, but every state in America still allows underage girls to marry, typically with the consent of parents, a judge or both. Twenty-seven states do not even set a minimum age by statute, according to the Tahirih Justice Center’s Forced Marriage Initiative.
A great majority of the child marriages involve girls and adult men. Such a sexual relationship would often violate statutory rape laws, but marriage sometimes makes it legal.
In New Hampshire, a girl scout named Cassandra Levesque learned that girls in her state could marry at 13. So she set out to change the law.
A legislator sponsored Cassandra’s bill to raise the age to 18, and researchers found that two 15-year-olds had recently married in New Hampshire, along with one 13-year-old. But politicians resisted the initiative.
“We’re asking the Legislature to repeal a law that’s been on the books for over a century, that’s been working without difficulty, on the basis of a request from a minor doing a Girl Scout project,” scoffed one state representative, David Bates. In March the Republican-led House voted to kill the bill, leaving the minimum age at 13. (Legislators seem willing to marry off girls like Cassandra, but not to listen to them!)
The Youngest Legally Able to Wed
More than half the states have no firm minimum age for marriage.
Youngest
able to
marry:
N.H.:
14 for boys, 13 for girls.
17
16
D.C.
15
Virginia: allows “emancipated minors” — those ages 16 and 17 granted adult status by a court — to marry.
14
No age floor
Source: Tahirih Justice Center
By The New York Times
New Jersey lawmakers passed a bill that would make their state the first in the country to ban marriages of people under 18, but Gov. Chris Christie this month blocked the legislation. New York legislators are considering a bill backed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo to raise the age to 17, from the current minimum, 14.
Sign Up for the Opinion Today Newsletter
Every weekday, get thought-provoking commentary from Op-Ed columnists, the Times editorial board and contributing writers from around the world.
- See Sample
- Privacy Policy
- Opt out or contact us anytime
Opponents worry that raising the age will lead to out-of-wedlock births, and they note that many underage marriages are consensual.
Globally, a girl marries before the age of 15 every seven seconds, according to estimates by Save the Children. As in Africa and Asia, the reasons for such marriages in the U.S. are often cultural or religious; the American families follow conservative Christian, Muslim or Jewish traditions, and judges sometimes feel that they shouldn’t intrude on other cultures.
Johnson, the former 11-year-old unwitting bride who is now fighting for Florida to set a minimum marriage age (there is none now), says that her family attended a conservative Pentecostal church and that other girls of a similar age periodically also married. Often, she says, this was to hide rapes by church elders.
She says she was raped by both a minister and a parishioner and gave birth to a daughter when she was just 10 (the birth certificate confirms that). A judge approved the marriage to end the rape investigation, she says, telling her, “What we want is for you to get married.”
Statutory Rape Within Marriage?
New Jersey state records show more than 100 marriages between 1995 and 2015 in which sex would constitute statutory rape because of spousal age differences: one person age 13 to 15 and a partner at least four years older. These marriages required court and parental approval.
GIRLS
GENDER UNKNOWN
Age 13
Age 14
Age 15
1995
GROOM AGE 28
1996
GROOM AGE 31
1997
GROOM AGE 30
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
GROOM AGE 27
2004
GROOM AGE 17
GROOM AGE 43
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
SPOUSE AGE 24
2015*
*2015 data is provisional. New Jersey stopped tracking gender as same-sex marriage was legalized.
Sources: New Jersey Department of Health; Unchained at Last
By The New York Times
“It was a terrible life,” Johnson recalls, recounting her years as a child raising children. She missed school and remembers spending her days changing diapers, arguing with her husband and struggling to pay expenses. She ended up with pregnancy after pregnancy — nine children in all — while her husband periodically abandoned her.