Pervasive, Legal, Catastrophic
Learn More at StopChildMarriages.orgPervasive, Legal, Catastrophic
Source: ICRW International Center for research on Women www.ICRW.org
Download the ICRW Report
Some 77% of the children wed were minor girls married to adult men, often with significant age differences. Some children were wed at an age, or with a spousal age difference, that constitutes statutory rapeunder their state’s laws.
Source: Unchained at Last 2000-2010
Each State Sets its own Legislation for Marriage Laws
Federal Laws do not even prevent “trafficking” of child brides”…
24 States do NOT have a minimum age for child marriage. See the Common Exceptions that allow for marriage below the legal age below*
Children in the U.S. typically are not allowed to initiate a legal proceeding in their own name. This means, in many states, children can be entered into marriages, typically by a parent or guardian, with little or no say from them – and then they are not allowed to file for divorce or annulment in their own name or even to seek a protective order.
A loophole in federal immigration law resulted in more than 5,000 cases of adults petitioning for visas on behalf of minors and nearly 3,000 cases of minors seeking to bring in older spouses or fiances, and enabled child marriages for children as young as 14 over a 10-year period, according to a report released by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee in January.
Urge your senators to support S.742
Protecting Children Through Eliminating Visa Loopholes Act
to close the visa loopholes that enable underage marriage
There is emerging awareness of American girls being exported to other countries for child marriage. Unchained at Last is doing groundbreaking work and research into the problem of forced and child marriage, and through their work, they are finding examples of girls being sent overseas for forced and child marriages.
How to know if there is Truly “Consent”
When a marriage is “arranged” and the bride and groom get the option to say no, they might face intense pressure from their families and society, or they might be too young and inexperienced to make such a life-altering decision. They might be rushed to give an answer, before they can fully think through their options. They might be bribed or tricked. They might be grappling with implicit and/or explicit threats about the harms that will befall them and their families if they do not agree to a marriage. They might be subjected to actual violence: locked up, beaten or shunned until they say yes. More…
Now Become Part of the solution
In most states, children age 16 or 17 can marry if their parents sign the marriage license application. Obviously, one child’s parental consent is another child’s parental coercion, but state laws do not call for anyone to ask the children whether they are being pressured into marriage. Even when a girl sobs openly while her parents sign the application and force her into marriage, the clerk has no authority to intervene.
In many states, judicial approval lowers the marriage age below 16, and many states do not specify a minimum age below which a judge may not approve a child marriage. Typically, states allow judges to approve marriages for couples whose ages or age differences should trigger a statutory-rape charge, not a marriage license.
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