Journalist Elizabeth Vargas interviewed Fraidy about forced and child marriage in the United States, while four American child marriage survivors shared their heartbreaking stories — all for a two-hour A&E documentary special now airing on Hulu titled “I Was A Child Bride: The Untold Story.” Stream the special here.
Raising awareness through media interviews is just one of the strategies we at Unchained use as we lead a growing national movement to end forced and child marriage in the U.S. through direct services and advocacy.
Child marriage, or marriage before 18, was legal in all 50 U.S. states as of 2017. Thanks to our relentless advocacy, that is changing. Delaware and New Jersey in 2018 became the first two states to end this human rights abuse, followed by American Samoa in 2018, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Pennsylvania and Minnesota in 2020, Rhode Island and New York in 2021 and Massachusetts in 2022.
However, child marriage remains legal in 43 states and is happening in the U.S. at an alarming rate: Our groundbreaking research revealed that nearly 300,000 children as young as 10 were married in the U.S. between 2000 and 2018 – mostly girls wed to adult men. Read more about child marriage in the U.S. and our work to end it.