Dawn Tyree was 11 when a family friend began raping her. And she was 13 when she got pregnant and her family pressured her to marry her 32-year-old rapist in Texas to avoid a criminal investigation.

This is what happens when child marriage remains legal in 49 U.S. states, despite the movement we at Unchained At Last lead to end child marriage in America, as Nicholas Kristof explains today in the New York Times.

“It’s frustrating that legislators cling to archaic marriage laws linked to so much abuse,” Kristof says.

But Kristof points to the victory we achieved last month in Delaware, which became the first U.S. state to ban child marriage, as evidence that things are about to change. As our Fraidy Reiss tells Kristof, “This is a historic moment for women and girls, where we’re finally ending this relic from a sexist past that is destroying girls’ lives.”

Read Kristof’s column here.

And read here about the national movement.