FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Identity

Woman Who Was Forced to Marry Her Rapist at 11 Is Trying to End Child Marriage

Because of legal loopholes, child marriage still exists in some states. This week, the Florida State passed a bill that would make it illegal to grant a marriage license to anyone under the age of 18.
Image by GIC via Stocksy. 

Sherry Johnson was only 11 years old when she married the church deacon who raped and impregnated her. He was 20. She hadn’t even made it to the fifth grade yet.

Sharing her horrifying story with CNN, Johnson recounted how she was repeatedly raped by at least two adult men from her church, discovered she was pregnant at the age of 10, and was forced by her mother to marry one of her rapists. While one judge refused to grant the marriage license because of her age, another in a neighboring county approved the union, knowing she was a child.

Advertisement

In short, Johnson’s childhood was ripped away from her. She was forced to leave school in the ninth grade, and by the time she was 17, she was raising six children with little support from her husband.

"The hospital knew. The school knew. The courts knew," Johnson said. "So plenty of people knew, but nothing was done. The whole state of Florida failed me. I feel my life was taken from me. The ones who were supposed to protect me, didn't."

Now decades later, Johnson is working to protect other children from a similar life. After spending five years lobbying lawmakers, she’s finally getting some traction in the work to abolish child marriage in her home state: Yesterday, the Florida Senate unanimously passed a bill that would make it illegal to grant a marriage license to anyone under the age of 18, with zero exceptions.

A companion bill is currently making its way through the House, though advocates are concerned about an amendment that was adopted Thursday afternoon: The bill now includes a loophole to allow 16- and 17-year-olds who are pregnant to get married with parental consent, as long as the age gap between the two parties is less than two years. During today’s judiciary committee vote, two lawmakers voted against the bill. One Republican told the Associated Press that the current statutes on the age to marry are already “very carefully crafted,” and that he doesn’t want “the message to be that it's better to not get married."

Advertisement

Most state laws, including Florida, have set the minimum age to marry at 18. But because of loopholes similar to the one passed today by the Florida House, children as young as 12 and 13 in some states can enter these legally binding unions, according to a report released last year from the Tahirih Justice Center. In New Hampshire, for example, a judge has the authority to grant a marriage license to a 13-year-old girl, even though the legal age to consent to marriage is 18.

Advocates say the easiest way to protect children from entering into a marriage where they have limited legal rights and are vulnerable to physical, emotional, or verbal abuse is to set the minimum marriage age at 18, without exceptions.

While the idea of 13-year-old child brides may seem antiquated—child marriage is very much still happening in the US. In Florida alone, Time reports, 3,161 children—72 of them under the age of 16—were married between 2010 and 2016. Currently, 25 states have no statutes that limit how young a child can be to legally be married, as long certain exceptions (such as parental or judicial consent) are met. As a result, the Tahirih Justice Center reports, more than 200,000 children, most of them girls, were married between 2000 and 2015.

But advocates are hopeful more states will step up and put an end to child marriage. Jeanne Smoot, Tahirih Justice Center's senior counsel for policy and strategy, tells Broadly that more than a dozen states are currently considering legislation to reform their minimum marriage age laws, including Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Arizona, and Vermont. Currently, Virginia, Texas, and New York are the only states to limit marriage to adults who are 18 or older, as well as court-emancipated minors.

Although the issue of child marriage has gotten a lot of attention in national media over the last year, Smoot says, “these laws have to be changed at the state level, and it’s important that regional media takes on this issue as well to raise awareness.”

If social media is any indicator, many people don’t seem to be fully aware that child marriage is still a thing in 2018. That’s why stories like Johnson’s are so important.

“It takes one person to actually come out and speak against it,” Johnson said yesterday after the Florida Senate bill passed, “but there are many others that actually have experienced it.”

Smoot says the Tahirih Justice Center has partnered with a number of survivors in order to put a face on this fight to end child marriage. “Their courage and resilience is incredible,” she says, “and the pace of change has picked up significantly because of their advocacy. We’ve found that once lawmakers are educated about this issue and see the profound personal impact that child marriage can have, they are moved to action.”