Child Marriages are Happening in the U.S. Too — and They Keep Happening.
In the March of 1971, Sherry Johnson was married in a white wedding dress, a homemade veil, and a tight, fearful smile. Just a year earlier, she was lying in a hospital bed, giving birth to her first child.
At the time of her wedding, she was 11 and an elementary schooler. Her husband was 20, a church deacon — and her rapist.
At the age of 8, Johnson was raped by the church bishop and then her stepfather. At the age of 9, she was raped by a church deacon and impregnated. In order to save the deacon’s reputation and prevent him from being locked behind bars, Johnson’s mother forced Johnson to marry him a year later.
Despite Johnson’s young age and lack of consent, the marriage was legal due to a loophole in the law. Though Florida’s laws prevented most child marriages, any female who was pregnant or had a child could be lawfully wedded. For six years, Johnson was bound to the man who had violated her rights and her body, and as a mere child, she was stripped away of her personal rights and basic freedoms. She was taken out of school and legally dependent on others. By the time she had divorced him at the age of 17, Johnson was already a mother of multiple children, living a life of hardship and trauma.
Stories like Johnson’s are far from uncommon — Johnson is one of the hundreds of thousands of child brides in the United States. A study conducted by advocacy group Unchained at Last revealed that from 2000 to 2010, over 200,000 children between the ages of 12 and 18 were legally wed in America. Around 77% of those children were child brides who married adult men. In states such as Idaho and Kentucky, 2 in every 1,000 children were already married.
Like Johnson, many of these children are facing life-long repercussions and consequences for early marriages. A study published by the American Academy of Pediatrics found that women who had been married as children were more likely to struggle with psychiatric disorders, substance abuse, and pathological gambling than their peers who had married as adults. According to The Economist, married children are twice as likely to live in poverty and three times as likely to be the victims of domestic violence than their unmarried peers. About half of them drop out of high school, and they are more prone to illnesses such as diabetes, cancer, and stroke.
Most child marriages don’t end happily — studies have found that 70–80% of them result in divorce. Many child brides and grooms are coerced into marriage, and they suffer from the consequences of a choice they never had a say in.
However, leniency and loopholes in state laws keep allowing child marriages to occur. In some states that impose minimum age requirements on marriages, children can get married with a parent’s permission at 16 or 17. If they have permission from a judge, they can sometimes get married at an even earlier age. In 25 states, there are no minimum age requirements to entering a marriage.
Nearly half a decade after Sherry Johnson was married at the age of 11, elementary schoolers can still legally get married today. However, Johnson’s story didn’t end at the altar. Johnson experienced two more abusive marriages but ultimately found the strength to leave. She went on to write a book about her experiences and earned a high school diploma. Little by little, she’s rebuilding the pieces of her life that she lost. And today, she’s striving to help others do the same — and avoid being in her position entirely.
Today, Johnson is an activist fighting against child marriages. She’s spoken to legislators and shared her story with the public, hoping to raise awareness to end the cycle of abuse and dependency that child marriages entail. She started with her home state, Florida, first. On March 10, 2018, the Florida legislature passed a bill prohibiting marriage for any child under the age of 17 in a nearly unanimous vote. Several of the lawmakers credited Johnson as the inspiration behind the bill. The bill has now gone to the governor. If passed, it will close the loophole that pregnant children or mothers may marry at any age — the same loophole that allowed Johnson’s marriage back in 1971.
For Johnson, there’s still more work to be done. There are more places in the United States with no age limit on marriages, and there are more restrictions that can be imposed to protect the rights of young girls and boys. In the words of Sherry Johnson, “it’s a step in the right direction, but it’s certainly not a victory.”
