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‘I was handed to a complete stranger’: the survivors fighting to end child marriage in 37 US states — and the people who want to keep it legal (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Child marriage, which activists describe as one or both parties entering a union while under age 18, remains legal in 37 US states. There are no federal laws against it, meaning minors can marry, with parental consent, before they can vote, drink, or buy lottery tickets in the majority of the country. Some states have a minimum marriage age on the books, which ranges from 15 to 18. Four states – California, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Mississippi – do not specify any minimum age at all.

Many survivors say they felt trapped in their marriages. Some, like Kosnik, must rely on their spouses for financial support. Others are up against complicit parents, who sign off on forced unions. In many states, statuatory rape is not a crime within marriage, creating a legal loophole that entices predators and increases the likelihood of sexual abuse. “Child marriage can be seen as a workaround for child rape,” said Fraidy Reiss, founder of Unchained at Last.

The US government calls child marriage a human rights abuse and has committed up to $5.3m to prevent it “in regions, countries, and communities where interventions are most needed and most likely to achieve results”. American exceptionalism would lead people to associate these regions with the global south, not the US, Gupta says. “Of course it’s prevalent here, too.”

Close to 300,000 minors were married between 2000 and 2018 in the US, according to a study conducted by Unchained at Last; a small number of them were as young as 10. Because 78% of minors who wed in that timespan were girls with adult husbands, advocates frame their cause around saving underage girls from older men.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I don't live in the USA either but I'm here on lemmy where most news is American and all the social media is the same. Korea as one of.my examples has had a strimg of absolutely horrendous rape and abuse scandals which would rival epstine but they're pretty much unknown in western media and discourse. Australian politics likewise is a total dumpster fire that barely registers beside American and European news, some people vaguely know about the guy that got firebombed for reporting on corruption because he was a YouTuber but there's endless insanity going on which barely gets a mention in ozzy news let alone international news, and even if it did no one would read it or talk about it like we do with American news.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago (1 children)

That's different though. Dumb shit happens everywhere, but the US is one of the few places where that dumb shit is legal and systemic.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

I really think if you learned more about the world you'd be incredibly shocked at how crazy it is