The New York Times today published an op-ed Unchained At Last’s executive director wrote, which revealed startling information about child and forced marriage in the US. Thousands of children, as young as age 10, were married in the US in recent years, Unchained revealed in the op-ed.
While most US states set 18 as the minimum marriage age, every state allows exceptions under which children under age 18 can marry. In New Jersey, for example, children age 16 or 17 may wed with “parental consent” — without any investigation into whether that’s actually “parental coercion” — and children 15 or younger may wed with judicial approval.
Unchained retrieved state health-department data and learned 3,499 children were married in New Jersey between 1995 and 2012. The youngest was 10 years old.
Shockingly, 91% of the children were married to adults, many of them at ages or with age differences that are considered statutory rape. And 90% were girls, underscoring that child and forced marriage here, like everywhere across the world, disproportionately affect women and girls.
Unchained also retrieved New York health-department data and found 3,853 children were married there between 2000 and 2010. In New York, too, the data show courts have issued marriages licenses where they should have issued charges of statutory rape.
Unchained has written draft legislation in New York and New Jersey to end child marriage in those states, and the op-ed called on legislators in every state to introduce and pass the same legislation.
Click here to read the op-ed, which was published online this morning and is scheduled to be published in print tomorrow.
You Can Help
Click here for more information about Unchained’s proposed legislation to end child marriage and about the petition Unchained has created to urge legislators in every state to pass it. Please sign the petition, and get everyone you know to do the same.