Child Marriage Havens Emerging Across America…

The areas where child marriage is nonetheless legal are emerging as havens for ceremonies that can destroy young people’s lives as more states make it illegal. A disturbing reality that a lack of integrated actions against child marriage can create is revealed in a Newsweek investigation.

Sara Tasneem, a Californian, was 15 when her papa ordered her to marry in a religious ceremony to a man nearly twice her age.

She was obviously female, she said, when they left the San Francisco Bay Area in the middle- 90s to embark on a street journey to Reno, Nevada, where she was officially married. ” Nothing asked me if this was something that I wanted”, she told Newsweek.

” I was a really little girl and I was obviously pregnant..”. Nothing asked me,’ do yo want me to visit your mother?’ Little. That day, generally, I signed anything away.”

Nevada law at the time made it legal for minors to get married while having one parent’s approval.

” It just took a name from a parent or guardian, generally on a authorization slip that was certified,” she said.

According to the marriage certificate, her mother, who was n’t informed of the union until after it took place, could no longer file a statutory rape claim against her husband.

From therefore, she was controlled in every aspect of her life, she said. When she became pregnant a second day, she was devastated”. She said,” I was so annoyed because I knew this was just one more thing that was going to stay me cooped up in this relationship.

She was unable to file for divorce on her own or find refuge in a shelter for domestic violence.

She claimed that it took three more years before she could divorce her husband and that she had to wait seven times before she could keep him. There are just so many restrictions for minors to break out of a relationship, she said,” that it really creates an unattainable legal trap for them.”

Tasneem, then 43, said she was stunned to find out while working on a study project in 2017 that union for those under 18 was legal in all 50 U. S. state and the District of Columbia.

Since then, she has been advocating to stop child relationship.

Almost 300, 000 children, some as young as 10, were married in the U. S. between 2000 and 2018, according to Untethered At Past, an organization working to end child marriage in the U. S. The vast majority were younger women wed to older people, the firm said.

A child marriage is defined as a union in which at least one of the events is under the age of 18. Given that at least one or both parties have never given their whole, completely, and informed consent, the UN describes it as a human rights violation and a form of forced marriage.

Because of their limited constitutional rights, say advocates, it makes minors prone and vulnerable.

But since 2018, 12 state have ended baby relationship, raising the legal age of marriage to 18. The House and Senate in New Hampshire have approved legislation to stop child relationship, and Democratic governors are awaiting its approval. Chris Sununu’s name. Sununu’s company has been contacted for comment via internet.

However, a bill to prevent child relationship is pending in California.

However, those who support ending baby wedding claim that while there is improvement, it is not happening quickly enough. According to them, the tangled web of state laws in the United States makes it simple for minors to travel to states where child marriage is still legitimate.

Feardy Reiss, the founder and executive director of Tamed At Last, said,” It’s always been pretty simple, and it will always be easy.”

” When one condition ends baby marriage, generally you’ll see in a neigboring position that still allows it, or even a few state over, you’ll discover those figures increase… A significant portion of the individuals we worked with were not married in the position where they were residing, I would suggest.

She noted that according to statistics compiled by Untethered At Last, three adolescents were married in Maine in 2020, but that figure tripled to nine in 2021, the same year that Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and New York put an end to child relationship.

The answer, she said, is for every U. S. position and the District of Columbia to increase the minimum age for marriage to 18, with no exceptions.

If New Hampshire is the next state to stop child marriage, Maine becomes the only position in the Northeast where a 17-year-old can be lawfully married with parental consent. The maximum relationship age was raised by the state last year to 17

Wedding commerce” is a great business,” Reiss said, adding it’s why some states do not implement residency requirements for weddings”. Maine now has to be very concerned that it wo n’t change into the state where children marry and are sent to.

Women “are just as secure as the weakest legislation allows them to be”, Casey Swegman, director of public coverage at Tahirih Justice Center, told Newsweek.

” There are still many states where having children is legal and do n’t have to be citizens.” We have a mixture of laws in the United States, but more likely than not, their marriage will become recognized in the position where they live. But minors may be brought from states with robust laws into states with poor laws, get married there, and then either stay in that condition or be brought back to their state of residency.

According to Swegman, some states collect and report on marriage data differently, while others do not, making it difficult to find out how many minors have travelled abroad to marry.

She claimed that Maryland, which had a higher rate of child marriages, increased as a result of Virginia’s 2016 amendments to its marriage laws.

” A few years after Virginia strengthened its law the first time, we did dig in with Maryland on that cross-border dynamic, and we did see an uptick,” she said.

” I believe that as more states strengthen their laws, we will regrettably see more of that. And so it’s very important to us that all 50 states reach the 18th grade. So no one state or jurisdiction becomes the quote, unquote, destination for child marriage”.

Tasneem pushed for legislation that would end child marriage in Washington. She called it a “huge win,” but she expressed concern that many children will be taken there from where they were raised.

Adults who want to marry children can shop around and find states that will allow it, she said, “because of the legal patchwork.”

” Now that Washington has ended child marriage, of course the predators will travel, they can go to California and easily get married. Unfortunately, California has no age floor to get married with parental consent and judicial review”. She said that while those are seen as safeguards that will benefit minors, they “actually hurt minors because most minors who are being forced into marriage are being made to do so by their parents.”

Swegman said she is most concerned that Washington, D. C. will become a major destination for child marriages.

Washington, D. C.,” an incredibly lax law”, she said. ” Sixteen and seventeen-year-olds can marry without going before a judge, and with the consent of just one parent.

” Our nation’s capital is actually sitting at the center of this region, as sort of wide- open destination, quite frankly, for anyone who would want to marry a child easily,” Swegman said.

Reiss claimed that some parents may travel further to states where the laws are the most lax to avoid simply moving to the state where the child marriage is permitted.

To put an end to a human rights abuse that destroys girls ‘ lives and creates a terrifying legal trap for minors, you must pass simple, common sense legislation that costs nothing, harms no one.

Some minors view marriage as a way to escape the harsh home life or the foster care system. According to Hayat Bearat, interim director of the Domestic Violence Institute at Northeastern University, opponents of child marriage bans view it as a solution to teenage pregnancy.

Tasneem claimed that her situation is not an exception and that she and others who were married while under the age of 18 had instances of domestic abuse before getting married.

” I’m in the majority of people who this happens to,” she said”. It occurs when girls marry adult men who are taken out of school like I was, who have multiple children against their will, and who have no way of leaving the union.

” And when they do leave the marriage, they often face poverty, and raising children on their own or in the system. This is a legal circumstance that we can change in real life.

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