The day of her wedding Heather dressed in a lilac gown with a sweetheart neckline.
Her blonde hair was styled into curls and held back by a sparkling tiara.
Her groom Aaron wore sneakers, dark slacks and a matching plaid tie.
The wedding took place under a wooden veranda in a park.
During the ceremony, Heather and Aaron held hands and recited vows, promising to love,
cherish, protect and comfort each other.
Afterwards, Heather’s dad made a speech wishing the couple good luck.
It was the day after Heather’s 15 birthday.
She was also 9 weeks pregnant.
Her new husband was 24 years old.
Heather had originally met Aaron when he and his parents came to work for the summer at
her grandparent’s fly fishing store in their rural Idaho town.
She and Aaron spent hours hanging out and talking.
One night they drank beer and hung out in Aaron’s camper van.
The next morning, Heather woke up disoriented without any memory of the night before.
She was upset when Aaron told her they had sex.
However, she liked him, so she continued to date him.
Several weeks later Heather got sick and learned that she was pregnant.
Per Idaho state law, it’s a felony for an adult to have sex with a minor under the age
of 16.
The maximum punishment for this crime is life in prison.
When she found out her daughter was pregnant, Heather’s mom Lynette, who’s divorced
from her father and lives in Utah called the local police and filed a report for statutory
rape.
Also per Idaho state law, sex between a married couple is legal, no matter the age of the
spouses.
In the US, people must be 18 to marry.
However, most states allow minors to marry under certain circumstances.
The requirements vary from state to state.
Heather’s father Keith, stepmother and paternal grandparents sat down for a discussion with
Aaron’s family.
Keith felt that the Bible advised marraige and quickly nixed any talk of his daughter
having an abortion.
Both families hoped that marriage would keep Aaron out of jail.
In Idaho, at age 15 Heather would need permission from a parent to marry; also she’d have
to go before a judge.
Worried that a judge might not allow the match, Heather’s family did some research.
While some states ask for both parents’ permission, Missouri only required one signature
from a custodial guardian or parent.
Also a court clerk, rather than a judge could approve a marriage.
The families piled into a van and drove 17 hours to Kansas City, Missouri.
First thing, Monday morning Heather, Aaron and Keith went to the Jackson County Courthouse.
The court clerk took a copy of Aaron’s and Heather’s ids.
Keith signed his consent for them to marry.
By 10 am the couple was on their way back to the hotel to get dressed up.
Within a few hours, they were married.
A few times Heather had been asked if this was what she wanted-by family, by the clerk
and by the officiant who married her.
Although she said yes, the truth was she was scared.
She cared for Aaron and she didn’t want him to get in trouble.
Even during the ceremony, Heather felt incredibly unsure, but as her family had gone through
a lot of trouble to arrange the marriage, she didn’t feel as though she could back
out.
Furthermore, Heather was excited about becoming a mom and felt like she should try to make
things work.
After their wedding, Heather and Aaron began living in a camper van on her grandparent’s
property.
Heather started her sophomore year of high school.
Aaron, a high school dropout, struggled to find work.
Within a few weeks Heather learned she had miscarried; in fact it happened right around
the time she got married.
Soon Aaron was arrested.
Lynette, angry over her ex-husband marrying off Heather behind her back, had pushed for
authorities to take action.
While Idaho law allowed Heather and Aaron to have sex as husband and wife, Aaron could
still be prosecuted for having sex with a minor prior to marriage.
Keith was also arrested on two counts, injury to a child and accessory to rape.
Just 6 weeks after their wedding, Heather reluctantly testified against Aaron at a pre-trial
hearing.
Although she claimed everything was ok, her life was falling apart.
With no baby, the main reason she had married was gone.
She and Aaron fought a lot; he had a dangerous temper.
Also, Heather had dropped out of school when Aaron was arrested.
While Aaron was out on bail, Heather continued to live with him.
She found a minimum wage waitress job at a local burger joint.
At home Aaron expected her to do everything, cleaning, laundry, cooking.
Heather felt like she was his personal slave.
As Aaron’s case proceeded through the court, Heather was determined to stick it out, she
had made a commitment.
However Lynette hired a lawyer to annul the marriage.
Just four months after they had gotten married, Heather’s marriage was annulled and Lynette
filed a restraining order on Heather’s behalf against Aaron.
Ultimately, Aaron was sentenced to 15 years with an option for parole after three years.
He is required to undergo sex offender and substance abuse treatment.
Whenever he gets out, he’ll be on the sex offender registry for at least 10 years, if
not more.
Keith was sentenced to four years for felony injury of a child, but because Heather had
somewhat agreed to the marriage his sentence was suspended.
Keith was instead ordered to spend 4 months in jail.
As the judge handed down the sentence he said to Keith 'Perhaps as you spend each of those
120 days in jail, you will think about the 120 days your daughter was married to a rapist
because of you'.
Heather moved to a suburb of Salt Lake City to live with her mom.
She got a job and hopes to get her GED someday.
Reflecting on the past, she can hardly believe that she was ever married at age 15.
When Americans think of child brides, they generally think of some poor girl far away
in a developing country.
That’s true.
According to the UN, in the developing world, about 1 in 9 girls are married by age 15 and
1 in 3 girls are married by age 18.
However, child marriages happen in the US more often than you would think.
America is incredibly hypocritical when it comes to minors marrying.
The US department of State encourages and funds policies overseas to educate young women
and prevent them from marrying so young.
However, the laws to protect minors from child marriage in the US are patchy and vary widely
from state to state.
Currently only 4 states: Delaware, New Jersey, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and one territory,
the U.S. Virgin Islands have set the legal minimum age to wed at 18 with no exceptions
allowed.
Out of the 46 states that allow minors to marry, 20 states have no minimum age to marry
with a parental or judicial waiver.
Child marriage is most common in conservative religious communities and poor, rural areas.
But it can be found across all races, socio-economic strata and in secular, as well as religious
families of different faiths.
A National Marriage Survey in 2011 found minors involved in child marriages from Hindu, Buddhist,
Catholic, Baptist, Muslim, and other faiths.
Often teenage girls marry due to pressure from parents or their religious community,
especially if they have gotten pregnant.
One survey found that American girls in immigrant families are sometimes pressured to marry
a distant relative abroad as a way of bringing him to the United States.
The news program Frontline analyzed data collected by states and discovered that between 2000
and 2015, at least 207,459 minors in the US were wed.
It’s likely the number of minors who were married during this period is far higher as
the data was incomplete.
Several states provided incomplete records or didn’t provide records at all.
Of the minors marrying 87% were female.
67% of those who married were 17 years old, another 29% were 16 and 5% were 15 and younger.
That meant 985 minors wed at age 14.
6 children wed at age 12.
Some states only keep data with categories such as “14 and younger,” without specifying
exactly how much younger some brides and grooms were, so it’s not possible to know the age
of the youngest children to wed in America between 2000 and 2015.
Other states don’t track spousal ages at all.
Of the minors who married, 14% married other minors while 86% married adults.
While most of the minors married adults in their 20s, there were some big age gaps.
In one of the more egregious cases in 2010, a 17-year-old girl married a 65-year-old man
in Idaho.
Once again the available data isn’t able to provide the full picture.
It doesn’t include minors immigrating to the US that were wed in their home country.
Per a Senate report between 2007 and 2017, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services
approved more than 5,500 petitions by adults to bring minor spouses or fiancées to the
U.S. and nearly 3,000 approvals for minors trying to bring in older spouses or fiancés.
Girls were the minors in 95 of the cases.
Several petitions included people in their 40s requesting on behalf of spouses as young
as 14 or 15.
Also Frontline’s report didn’t include data about children wed in religious-only
ceremonies or taken overseas to be married, which are two common situations that happen
with child marriage in the US.
15 year old Sara had big plans for her future.
She had just finished her freshman year of high school.
She wanted to join the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) and apply to the US
Air Force Academy, ultimately hoping to go to law school.
But those future plans were derailed when her mom found out that a boy from school was
interested in her daughter.
She called her ex husband, Sara’s father, for his input on how to handle the situation.
Though conservative, Sara’s mother was open to her daughter dating.
However, Sara’s father, a member of a cult like Islamic offshoot religious group, was
not.
He insisted his daughter come to California and spend the summer with him.
Once in California Sara’s father made it clear that the boy from school was forbidden
and lectured her about being chaste, even though she hadn’t done anything.
Not long after that Sara’s father took her to a religious conference where she was introduced
to a 28 year old man.
They were married that same evening.
Though the marriage was spiritual and not legal, under California law, 15-year-old Sara
could have been legally married then with parental consent and a court order.
After the wedding Sara’s husband took her out of the US to his home country (which she
prefers not to identify).
Sara’s mom had no idea all of this was happening and Sara wasn’t allowed to communicate with
her mom for months.
After Sara became pregnant her husband decided that they should return to the US to have
the baby.
The couple settled in the San Francisco Bay area.
One day Sara was taken on a road trip to Reno, Nevada to get legally married.
Not completely understanding the legal ramifications of what she was doing, Sara agreed to marry.
In Nevada minors as young as 16 can be married with the consent of at least one parent, and
Sara’s father had consented.
Feeling trapped, Sara worked hard to get her GED.
She wanted to continue her studies and her husband agreed, but continually threw roadblocks
in her way.
By age 19 Sara was pregnant with her second child.
After several years of careful planning, hard work and secretly saving money, Sara was finally
able to file divorce papers while her husband was out of the US on a summer visit to his
home country with their children.
She was 26 and had been married 10 years.
Her husband fought back and kept their kids overseas.
Thankfully, Sara’s in-laws arranged for her to get her children back.
But Sara’s husband began a long, drawn out legal battle.
It was another 3 years before Sara’s divorce was finalized.
Today Sara works with nonprofits to change the laws regarding child marriage.
“So much of this story, for me, is how much of a struggle life was after divorcing him.”
she says.
“What people don’t always think about is the major setbacks and obstacles that child
marriage victims face in rebuilding their lives.”
Between 70-80% of child marriages end in divorce.
Married minors are twice as likely to live in poverty and three times more likely to
suffer domestic violence than are married adults.
Girls who marry before 19 are 50% more likely than their unmarried peers to drop out of
high school and four times less likely to graduate from college.
They are much more likely to suffer from mental-health problems too.
If a minor tries to leave their marriage a wide variety of problems await them, including
gray areas with the law.
While they have entered into a legal contract, in most cases, they aren’t considered legal
adults.
This means even if they have the resources, they cannot file for divorce or sign rental
leases.
If they have been abused, they cannot seek protection in domestic violence shelters which
are generally for adults.
In some states, if minors leave home they are considered to be a runaway and authorities
can return them to the care of their spouse or family.
Even when married minors become of age and want to leave the marriage, they often have
circumstances or children which makes it hard to go.
When Betsy was 17 she was forced to wed a man she had known for 45 minutes in an arranged
marriage in her Orthodox Jewish community in New York.
At age 27, Betsy was finally able to escape with her 3 young children.
However, she was ill prepared for the outside world.
She was a single mother with a high school equivalency certificate, no work experience
and no money for child care.
The temporary and part-time jobs she managed to find couldn’t cover her bills.
Betsy received section 8, Medicaid and food stamps.
Sometimes she went without so her children could eat.
Only when her youngest child reached school age was Betsy finally able to get full-time
employment and gain some stability.
We’ve talked about the problems that teenage girls face when marrying young, do young men
experience similar issues?
Yes, although there’s even less data available regarding them.
Early marriage often brings early fatherhood and many young grooms are forced to drop out
of school and take menial jobs to support their new families which often creates or
perpetuates a cycle of poverty.
Considering the range of problems that arise from child marriages, you’d think the US
would be eager to change the laws.
However, there’s a wide range of proponents of child marriage that span the political
spectrum.
Religious groups that believe teenage girls make better spouses because they tend to be
more malleable than older women.
Social conservatives argue that early marriages can reduce births out-of-wedlock as well as
the number of single mothers on welfare.
Libertarians have defended the practice because banning it means that the government intrudes
on the right to marry.
Critics point to the small number of minors who marry other minors.
If under 18 marriage is banned, it can restrict young people in the military from receiving
certain benefits.They also point out that in most states the minor must go before a
judge to get consent to marry, thus minors are empowered to halt the proceedings if they
desire.
Nonprofits that work with child marriage survivors say that child brides are under pressure and
and don’t feel safe enough to tell a judge the truth.
While a small amount of minors marrying other minors may be inconvenienced by having to
wait until age 18 to get wed, a ban would serve the greater good.
A nationwide ban on marriage below age 18 would end statutory rape loopholes and end
sactioned predator access to minors.
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