Most US states set 18 as the minimum marriage age, but every US state allows exceptions under which children can marry, Unchained’s executive director explained today on public radio.
Fraidy Reiss made the comment in an interview with The Takeaway about child marriage that aired today on Public Radio International.
Little research has been done on child marriage in the US. Unchained’s research to date has found that thousands of children – as young as age 10 – have been married recently in the US. Most were girls, and most were wed to adult men, often with age differences that are considered statutory rape under state law.
“We need to put a stop to this,” Reiss said in the interview. “Of course, ending those exceptions that allow children to get married, that’s a no-brainer.”
Unchained has written legislation to eliminate the exceptions to the minimum marriage age and end child marriage. The legislation has been introduced in New York as A8563 (thanks to Asw. Amy Paulin) and is soon to be introduced in New Jersey.
Click here to listen to the full interview: “The Child Bride Next Door: Inside America’s Forced Marriage Problem“
Click here to learn more about Unchained’s efforts to end child marriage in the US
Thanks to your support, Unchained At Last has seen extraordinary successes this year. Here’s what you have helped Unchained to achieve in 2015:
xxx
Our number of clients has surged past the 200 mark. That’s more than 200 brave women and girls to whom we have provided – or are providing – crucial legal and social services, to help them flee or resist an arranged/forced marriage.
Syeda is one of those women: forced into marriage in Pakistan at age 16, and then brought to the US and subjected to unspeakable physical and sexual abuse before she turned to us for help. Click HERE to learn more about the direct client services we offer women and girls like Syeda, which range from planning high-stakes international escapes for women and girls taken overseas for a forced marriage to psychotherapy, career counseling and financial coaching.
In June, we hosted our first client outing: a trip to Six Flags Great Adventure and Safari, to give the brave women and girls a break from the trauma they are enduring as they flee forced marriages. All told, 28 people (and one puppy) joined the trip, which was sponsored by the Good People Fund.
We broke the news in October, through an op-ed published in the New York Times, that America has a serious child-marriage problem. We revealed that child marriage is legal in every US state, and that at least thousands of children, as young as 10, were married recently in the US.
As a result of our op-ed, Asw. Amy Paulin introduced legislation in New York to end child marriage (A8563). Additionally, we are working with legislators in New Jersey who have promised to introduce our bill there early next year, after New Jersey’s new legislative session begins, and we are looking at other states as well.
Click here to learn more about how you can get involved to help end forced marriage in the US.
We made extraordinary gains in raising national awareness about forced marriage. Here are some of the ways we made that happen:
~ A groundbreaking meeting with the White House Council on Women and Girls and key federal agencies in March, organized by the Tahirih Justice Center, to talk about developing a national policy on forced marriage.
~ A historic Chain-In in New York City in April, at which some 60 people chained their arms and taped their mouths to protest forced marriage.
~ Some 20 media interviews, including one that led to a glowing New York Times story; appearances on NPR’s All Things Considered and PRI’s The World; plus an op-ed published in the New York Times.
~ Some 30 presentations to more than 1,300 people at at houses of worship, universities and other venues. At one of those presentations, at a conference at Rutgers Law School, keynote speaker Gloria Steinem commended Unchained.
~ Two training courses on family law, with a focus on forced marriage (given in partnership with Rutgers Institute for Professional Education) to a combined 100 lawyers, many who are now on Unchained’s team of Pro Bono Attorneys.
Our hard work has not gone unnoticed. Here are some of the awards and honors earned this year:
~ The Pixel Project named Unchained’s founder and executive director, Fraidy Reiss, one of 16 female role models around the world who are fighting to end violence against women in their communities.
~ The South Asian Bar Association of New Jersey gave Unchained its Public Interest Award.
~ Soroptimist International of Suburban Essex gave Reiss its Ruby Award: For Women Helping Women.
So it’s been an exciting year at Unchained, and 2016 promises to be even more exciting. With your continued support, we will continue working on everything you just read, and we also have big plans, including:
LEGISLATION TO END CHILD MARRIAGE: Look out for updates on our advocacy efforts, which we plan to expand beyond New York.
UNCHAINED CLUB: An opportunity for high school and college students across America to join the movement to end forced marriage in the US.
WINTER BLAST: A fundraiser featuring The Nerds, on January 29, 2016, in Kenilworth, NJ. Open bar, food, raffles – plus you can win the chance to sing with The Nerds during the final set! Hosted by the Junior Woman’s Club of Westfield, to benefit Unchained.
You can help Unchained continue doing its important work to help women and girls affected by arranged/forced marriage. Here’s how your donation could impact the life of a girl or woman:
$50 buys a week’s worth of groceries for a girl who has fled a forced marriage
$100 means a winter coat for a woman who escaped a forced marriage without any of her personal belongings
$250 covers court fees so a woman can file for divorce and end an unwanted marriage
$500 pays for a mover to help a woman move away from an abusive arranged marriage and into her own home
$1,000 gives medical care to a forced-marriage survivor who is not eligible for Medicaid
$1,500 buys a last-minute plane ticket back to the US for a girl taken overseas to be forced into marriage
$5,000 provides a custody evaluation to save a woman from losing custody of her children as she flees a forced marriage
Unchained At Last envisions a world where every woman is free to choose whether, when and whom to marry, and whether to get divorced. Together we can achieve that vision.
The Pixel Project today named Fraidy Reiss, Unchained’s founder and executive director, as one of 16 female role models fighting to end violence against women.
“Many of these outstanding women and girls have shown that it is possible to transform personal pain that came out of facing gender-based violence, into positive action to stop violence against women, empower themselves and to show other survivors that it is possible to move forward with dignity and happiness,” according to Pixel Project.
See the full list of 2015 role models, and their details, by clicking here.
Unchained is making progress on its mission to end child marriage in the US: New York Assemblywoman Amy Paulin today introduced the first bill to end underage marriage (A8563).
Click here to read more about Unchained’s advocacy efforts on the issue of child marriage.
The South Asian Bar Association of New Jersey tonight presented Unchained At Last with SABA’s Public Interest Award, in recognition of Unchained’s work to help women and girls escape arranged/forced marriages.
Unchained’s executive director, Fraidy Reiss, and Unchained’s board president, Nina Lazar, attended SABA NJ’s second annual dinner to accept the award.
“Unchained is humbled and honored to receive this award,” Reiss said. She noted that Unchained is able to provide free legal services to its clients only because of the generosity of Unchained’s team of some 100 pro bono attorneys.
Some 60 attorneys attended today, as Unchained again gave its popular training course on family law, in partnership with Rutgers Institute for Professional Education. The course provided an overview of New Jersey matrimonial law, covering the major steps of the divorce process — from filing the complaint to addressing issues of equitable distribution, child custody, child support and alimony — with a focus on arranged/forced marriage and the legal and ethical issues involved.
*The course fee of $150 was waived for admitted attorneys who committed to representing an Unchained client pro bono as she flees from an arranged/forced marriage. (The course was worth 8 or more CLE credits in New Jersey and New York, and 6.5 credits in Pennsylvania.)
~ Deb Guston, Esq. | Guston & Guston
~ Ellen Gold, Esq. | Attorney at Law
~ Rachel Isaacs, Esq. | The Micklin Law Group
~ Fraidy Reiss | Unchained At Last
Unchained thanks the Jewish Women’s Foundation of New Jersey for the generous grant that made this CLE course possible.
NEXT COURSE DATE: November 11, 2016
CHECK BACK SOON FOR DETAILS
Meanwhile, click here to apply to join Unchained’s team of Pro Bono Attorneys, which will allow you to take the course for free.
Why should attorneys donate their time?
Attorneys who commit to representing an Unchained client pro bono receive:
~ Free access to this training course, worth significant CLE credits in NJ, NY and PA ($150 value)
~ Experience in matrimonial law
~ Mentoring from an experienced matrimonial law attorney
~ Valuable networking opportunities
~ Hours of service toward exemption from mandatory pro bono assignments
~ Unchained funds for expert witnesses and other court-related fees
~ The chance to unchain a woman or a girl from a marriage she did not choose
Attorneys with 5+ years of matrimonial law experience also can take advantage of these opportunities:
~ Mentor another attorney (counts in New Jersey as hours of service toward exemption from mandatory pro bono assignments)
~ Present a portion of an upcoming Unchained CLE course (earns double CLE credits in New Jersey)
Some 100 guests today joined UnWINED With UnCHAINED: An evening of goodwill and great spirits to benefit women and girls fleeing forced marriages. The guests sampled wine, filled up on hors d’oeuvres, enjoyed live music and bid on exciting auction items, including Giants tickets, tickets to The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and a Boston weekend getaway.
The UnWINED guests did more than have a great time. They also honored two women who have worked tirelessly to help Unchained in its mission of unchaining women from forced marriages: Naomi Eisenberger, executive director of the Good People Fund, and Susan Fleisch, MSW LCSW, who serves on Unchained’s board of advisers.
Additionally, the UnWINED guests helped to raise more than $15,000 to help the brave women and girls who are trying to resist or escape coercive marriages in the US.
Click here to view photos from UnWINED.
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.
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.
Gloria Steinem, the renowned feminist, journalist and activist, commended Unchained At Last today in her keynote address at a conference on gender equality.
Steinem mentioned Unchained by name as she spoke about how gratified she was to attend the conference, titled Rutgers Celebrates Beijing+20, and learn about the important work people are doing to advance gender equality.
Unchained At Last’s executive director, Fraidy Reiss, was a panelist at the conference, held at Rutgers School of Law – Newark. Shortly before Steinem took the stage, Reiss explained to the audience that legal exceptions allow child marriage in every U.S. state, and that Unchained’s research found that nearly 3,500 children – the youngest just 10 years old – have been married recently in New Jersey. Unchained currently is working on legislation to end child marriage in New Jersey and New York.
Steinem referred to Unchained’s findings and work in her keynote speech.
Some 130 people attended the conference, which examined “continued challenges in achieving gender equality since the groundbreaking Beijing Conference” of 1995.
Click here for more information.
