quote:

When she was a scrawny 11-year-old, Sherry Johnson found out one day that she was about to be married to a 20-year-old member of her church who had raped her.

“It was forced on me,” she recalls. She had become pregnant, she says, and child welfare authorities were investigating — so her family and church officials decided the simplest way to avoid a messy criminal case was to organize a wedding.

“My mom asked me if I wanted to get married, and I said, ‘I don’t know, what is marriage, how do I act like a wife?’” Johnson remembers today, many years later. “She said, ‘Well, I guess you’re just going to get married.’”

So she was. A government clerk in Tampa, Fla., refused to marry an 11-year-old, even though this was legal in the state, so the wedding party went to nearby Pinellas County, where the clerk issued a marriage license. The license (which I’ve examined) lists her birth date, so officials were aware of her age.

Not surprisingly, the marriage didn’t work out — two-thirds of marriages of underage girls don’t last, one study found — but it did interrupt Johnson’s attendance at elementary school. Today she is campaigning for a state law to curb underage marriages, part of a nationwide movement to end child marriage in America. Meanwhile, children 16 and under are still being married in Florida at a rate of one every few days.

You’re thinking: “Child marriage? That’s what happens in Bangladesh or Tanzania, not America!”



...

Unchained at Last was not able to get data for the other states. But it extrapolated that in the entire country, there were almost 250,000 child marriages between 2000 and 2010. Some backing for that estimate comes from the U.S. Census Bureau, which says that at least 57,800 Americans age 15 to 17 reported being in marriages in 2014.

...

A great majority of the child marriages involve girls and adult men. Such a sexual relationship would often violate statutory rape laws, but marriage sometimes makes it legal.

...



New Jersey lawmakers passed a bill that would make their state the first in the country to ban marriages of people under 18, but Gov. Chris Christie this month blocked the legislation. New York legislators are considering a bill backed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo to raise the age to 17, from the current minimum, 14.

...

Globally, a girl marries before the age of 15 every seven seconds, according to estimates by Save the Children. As in Africa and Asia, the reasons for such marriages in the U.S. are often cultural or religious; the American families follow conservative Christian, Muslim or Jewish traditions, and judges sometimes feel that they shouldn’t intrude on other cultures.

...

Johnson, the former 11-year-old unwitting bride who is now fighting for Florida to set a minimum marriage age (there is none now), says that her family attended a conservative Pentecostal church and that other girls of a similar age periodically also married. Often, she says, this was to hide rapes by church elders.

She says she was raped by both a minister and a parishioner and gave birth to a daughter when she was just 10 (the birth certificate confirms that). A judge approved the marriage to end the rape investigation, she says, telling her, “What we want is for you to get married.”

...

Accretionist posted:

From NYTimes, A Bride in Florida: 11, Pregnant and Pushed to Marry Her Rapist


America, what the gently caress?

Dapper_Swindler posted:

right wing american Christianity is loving cancer

quote:

My stepfather began having problems getting erections when I was a senior in high school. How did I find out about this? He told me that he was using me to get an erection so that he could have sex with my mother.

We were very religious people. We attended a Fundamentalist Baptist Church so sexually conservative I was not even allowed to wear jeans. But still, he would sit me down and discuss what he had been thinking on those nights when he pressed my body against his and stroked my hair, the curve of my hip and the area between my collar bone and breasts until his penis was hard against my thigh.

In those incredibly awkward and galling conversations he reassured me repeatedly that he would never do anything to compromise my virginity. Using the tone of a person explaining something perfectly logical that should be obvious to anyone with the IQ of a mollusk, he explained that my mother had gained weight and it was killing his boners. I was young, slender and attractive and he saw nothing terribly wrong with using my body to kick-start the old engine and thoughts of me to keep it humming along.

What baffled me then but makes perfect sense to me now is why he thought that I would be reassured by his repeated promises that he would not cross the arbitrary line of virginity. He had no real plans to stop using me as his fluffer. But my virginity, which he had pledged to protect and to keep safe for my future husband, was off-limits. As time went by and his fluff-sessions became more lurid, I feared the line of technical virginity would be like the Maginot Line, more an illusion of safety than an actual defense.

But he kept his promise. And now I understand why. The emphasis placed on virginity by the Purity Culture allowed my step-father to minimize his non-vaginal sexual abuse of my body.

...

Blue Raider posted:

teenagers gently caress without rubbers and their parents make them get married to save face. not exactly a greek loving tragedy here

Blue Raider posted:

teenagers gently caress without rubbers and their parents make them get married to save face. not exactly a greek loving tragedy here

quote:

A great majority of the child marriages involve girls and adult men

Bulgogi Hoagie posted:

well its not actually common either so there goes the thread

very much looking forward to shooting these people in far cry 5 though

Bulgogi Hoagie posted:

very much looking forward to shooting these people in far cry 5 though

Dapper_Swindler posted:

Christianity is loving cancer,

Rutibex posted:

why would any girl want to end this practice? she can divorce her gross old husband at 18 and get some sweet assets and alimony for life. great way to start college

Rutibex posted:

why would any girl want to end this practice? she can divorce her gross old husband at 18 and get some sweet assets and alimony for life. great way to start college

Bulgogi Hoagie posted:

20 ‱

Accretionist posted:

From NYTimes, A Bride in Florida: 11, Pregnant and Pushed to Marry Her Rapist


America, what the gently caress?

qkkl posted:

Is it legal to have sex with a minor if they are your spouse? I'm assuming no, considering that they put that one Mormon leader in prison for it.

Hastings posted:

I cannot even imagine what kind of thinking would have to take place for a Christian to rationalize this practice.

Manchild King posted:

I don't think ministers should be able to rape you. It's wrong.

Bulgogi Hoagie posted:

i wouldn't say a maximum of 20 ‱ is very common at all OP

for comparison, duchenne muscular dystrophy, a rare muscle wasting disease, affects about 1 in 5000 males

scrubs season six posted:

Please stop loving children.

Bulgogi Hoagie posted:

Manchild King posted:

I don't think ministers should be able to rape you. It's wrong.

scrubs season six posted:

You realize 25/10000 is 1 in 400 right?

El Boot posted:

Even the strictest, most conservative southern baptists I know think Pentecostals are lunatics

Who What Now posted:

The kind that reads Deuteronomy 22. This poo poo is exactly in line with the Bible.

Blue Raider posted:

i wish i could run off this loving jahova that shows up about once every other week without committing misdemeanor assault

green chicken feet posted:

How on Earth does getting married erase the crime that happened before the marriage like in the case of this 11-year-old?

WatermelonGun posted:

Do what I did, answer the door while drinking beer on a Sunday morning in a Morbosidad shirt. They will stop coming.

I didn't do that to be an edgelord I'm just a dirtbag

Who What Now posted:

Because God says so. The rapist pays the dad a fee and marries the victim and everything is cool.