Why Is Child Marriage Still A Get Out Of Jail Free Card for Pedophiles?

I wish I could tell you only a few states allow child marriage, but it’s the other way around. Only ten states don’t.

You wouldn’t think people would get so mad about two people getting hitched. That’s what the bride’s mother said.

“Eunice loves Charlie and Charlie loves Eunice, and’ taint nobody’s business but theirs. Never in all my borned days did I see such a commotion and flusteration about two people getting’ hitched.” (source)

That’s what she said when the newspapers came knocking. She was livid that everyone thought it was their business. She was happy her daughter found herself a good man.

“Charlie is a good boy,” she said.

“I thank God my little girl’s got a good husband, and I pray they’ll live together and be happy. People shouldn’t orter pester ’em so.” (source)

Here’s why people were mad. The bride was nine. The groom, twenty four.

He got the marriage certificate himself and put her age as 18. When he brought her to the preacher, the preacher looked at the girl, looked at the age, then shrugged and married them anyway.

If I didn’t someone else woulda, he said.

Her father-in-law was the only one who saw the whole mess as wrong. “She can’t hardly read and can’t count past 25,” he protested and tried to get the marriage annulled when his son pulled the little girl out of school to get married.

What he thought didn’t matter. He was Charlie’s dad. As long as the girl’s parents had no complaint, it was okay by the law.

Right before they got married, Charlie bought Eunice a dolly for Christmas.

Her mom got so mad when pictures of her Eunice with that dolly were slapped all over newspapers across America. She doesn’t hardly play with dollies, her mom protested. She likes sewing better.

Sitting on her husband’s knee with a dolly, she was five years from being a mother herself. She got pregnant at 13, had her first baby at fourteen.

A year after the wedding, Time Magazine covered the story and said the state of Tennessee changed two laws because of Charlie and Eunice.

Know what they changed?

First, they raised the legal age for marriage to 14. Nine is too young, they said.

Second? They changed the laws so married children can’t be forced to go to school if their adult spouse says they don’t have to.

Those little girls got a house to run, you know.

Of course, it was 1937 in rural Tennessee. Charlie was a farmer. No electricity, no running water and no railroad service. That explains it all, right?

That’s how it used to be in the olden days, right?

Sorry, no. That’s how it still is.

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Heather was 14 when the son of her daddy’s business partner invited her to watch tv in the apartment above the store. They were watching tv and drinking fruity beer that he told her was harmless.

It made her sleepy, she said. His name was Aaron and he was twenty four.

When she woke in the morning, Aaron said they’d had sex. She said she was so scared she wanted to puke. She didn’t tell until she started showing.

Her mom and dad were divorced and she was with her dad and stepmom that summer. Her dad called her mom and said Heather got pregnant. Her mom freaked out and called the police to file statutory rape charges.

So her dad sat her down and said look, Aaron is a fine young man and if you don’t marry him, he’s going to go to jail. It will ruin his life. You want to do that to him? Want to ruin Aaron’s life? She said she was so terrified.

She was kind of excited to have a baby to hold and love, but she didn’t want to get married. But she didn’t want to be responsible for ruining Aaron’s life.

Her daddy bought her a tiara and told her she can’t send that boy to jail so they drove out of state in the middle of the night to a place that would let her marry underage with her dad’s consent. That was in 2015.

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We think child marriage only happens in developing countries like Afghanistan, Yemen, Ethiopia, Pakistan, and India. And it does happen in developing countries. 39,000 girls are forced into marriages with older men every day. About one every 2 seconds. But it happens in America, too. More than you know.

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Sherry Johnson, now 61, said it happened to her when she was 11. She was forced to marry a 20 year old deacon from her Pentecostal church in Florida. He raped her when she was ten and she got pregnant.

She said the whole church community, including her mother, covered up the rape to protect him, and forced her to marry her rapist.

That’s usually how it happens. A man has sex with a child and the solution, too often, it to just make it all legal. No more shame. No police, no courts or ugly charges. Just marry them off, if he will. Because if he will? Problem solved.

“My mother put the church above her daughter,” she says.

Her school, the doctors and all the staff at Jackson Memorial where she gave birth, they all saw a pregnant 10-year-old and no one did anything. Child services came once, after they got a call, so she told them she had been raped and forced to marry him and he keeps raping her. She asked them to help her.

They left and never came back. Because she was married and her mother gave consent. Sorry, can’t help you.

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It’s not different today.

In July 2023, a mob of women wearing bridal gowns and veils stood on the steps of the state capital in California. Their wrists were chained and their mouths were taped with black duct tape. They are survivors of child marriage.

In California, you have to be 18 to file for divorce, but there’s no minimum age for marriage. They want California to outlaw child brides.

“When I was 14, my parents coerced me into marrying the 27-year-old pedophile who’d been abusing me for two years because I became pregnant and it brought “shame” to the family,” said Pat Abatemarco.

When she turned 18, a social worker helped her escape with her little girl. She doesn’t want it happening to other children, but it still does.

I wish I could tell you only a few states allow child marriage, but it’s the other way around. Only ten states don’t.

Just five years ago, all states across America allowed child marriage.

As of July 2023, ten states have banned underage marriage, with no exception:

• Delaware and New Jersey banned child marriage in 2018

• Pennsylvania and Minnesota banned it in 2020

• Rhode Island and New York banned it in 2021

• Massachusetts banned child marriage in 2022

• Vermont, Connecticut, and Michigan banned it in 2023

Five states still have no minimum age at all. In California, Mississippi, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Washington no age is too young as long as a parent or guardian gives consent or a judge invokes a special permission clause if the parents will not.

According to Unchained At Last, 86% of child marriages are minor girls being married off to an adult man.

As long as a parent, guardian or judge gives consent to marriage, he’ll never be charged with sexual assault or statutory rape because he did the right thing and married her.

Legally, she’ll have no options until she is 18. Because she is too young to file for divorce or hire a lawyer and domestic abuse shelters do not accept minors.

If there is a louder or clearer way to tell girls they truly do not matter, I don’t know what it might be. According to UNICEF, child marriage is declining. Slowly. At the current rate of decline, it will only take another 300 years before it’s eliminated.

Until then, child marriage remains a get out of jail free card for pedophiles.