176 Children Were Married in RI Over Decade: That Is a Tragedy - Casimiro and Reiss
Monday, April 26, 2021
Most social justice issues are complex, with no easy fix. We might not end systemic racism or figure out police reform in our lifetime.
But if you join us, we can end one monumental social injustice this week. We can eliminate child marriage in Rhode Island.
Yes, the sexist, archaic practice of child marriage remains a pervasive problem here. The law still allows children of any age, including toddlers, to be entered into marriages before age 18 without any input from them – before they have the legal right to file for divorce, and, depending on their age, before they are old enough to consent to sex.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTAn estimated 176 children were married in Rhode Island between 2000 and 2019. Of those for whom gender and spousal data were available, 88 percent were girls wed to adult men an average of 4.1 years older.
We are Representative Julie Casimiro, a state legislator, and Fraidy Reiss, a forced marriage survivor and executive director of Unchained At Last, a nonprofit that works to end forced and child marriage in the U.S. through direct services and advocacy. Here is why you should be as horrified as we are about child marriage in Rhode Island.
The marriage age here is 18, but alarming legal loopholes allow minors age 16 or 17 to marry with parental “consent,” and allow those 15 and younger, without any minimum age specified, to marry with parental “consent” and judicial approval.
In Unchained’s experience, when a child is forced to marry, the perpetrators are typically the parents – so parental “consent” can easily be parental coercion. Even if a teen sobs openly and begs for help at the clerk’s office while their parents sign the form, the state issues a marriage license.
The judicial approval process is not much better. It does not require the court to interview the child nor specify any criteria a court is required to consider before approving the marriage of a child. A girl who is too young to consent to sex is marrying a registered sex offender? Sure.
Not that a more robust judicial review process would help. In Unchained’s experience, a minor who is forced to marry also is forced to lie to the court about it.
The solution is not to find a better process for entering children into marriages. Marriage before 18, even for a highly mature 17-year-old, is inherently dangerous, regardless of the process.
Until the day they turn 18 and attain the rights of adulthood, minors can easily be forced into marriage or forced to stay in a marriage. If they run away from home, to escape from an impending forced marriage or an abusive spouse, they can be deemed “wayward” and committed to a “training school for youth.” Besides, where would they go?
Unchained has found that domestic violence shelters across the U.S. typically turn away unaccompanied minors. Youth shelters are not a solution, since they require parental consent unless the child is under state custody.
Children cannot easily retain an attorney to help them figure out their options, since most contracts with minors – including retainer agreements – are voidable. Perhaps most shockingly, though, minors are allowed to bring a legal action only through a “next friend” or guardian ad litem, which means they cannot independently file for divorce.
When terrified minors reach out to Unchained to get help escaping a forced marriage and they learn of their limited options, many turn to suicide attempts and self-harm. Death seems like the only way out for them.
Whether or not child marriage is forced, it produces devastating, lifelong repercussions for girls in the United States, destroying their education, economic opportunities and health. It significantly increases a woman’s risk of experiencing domestic violence. It almost always ends in divorce. In fact, the U.S. State Department has called marriage before 18 a “human rights abuse.”
Further, child marriage undermines statutory rape laws. Sex with a child under age 14 is a crime, as is sex between someone over age 18 and a 14- or 15-year-old. Yet marriage at those ages is legal. Each time Rhode Island issues such a marriage license – which the state did twice between 2013 and 2016, according to Unchained’s analysis of data from the Rhode Island Department of Health – the state sent a child home to be raped.
Unlike many other social injustices, child marriage has a simple solution. Rep. Casimiro and Sen. John Burke have introduced legislation, H5387/S398, to keep the marriage age at 18 but eliminate the loopholes that allow marriage before that age. This commonsense legislation harms no one, costs nothing and ends a human rights abuse.
The pending legislation is consistent with legislation that recently passed in four U.S. states and is pending in 11 other states. It is consistent, too, with the promise the U.S. and 192 other countries have made under the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals to eradicate child marriage by year 2030 to help achieve gender equality.
At two legislative hearings on the bills, groups across Rhode Island and beyond as well as survivors of child marriage expressed their support, and no one expressed opposition.
But Unchained has seen repeatedly in other states that legislation focused on girls’ rights often fails because legislators fail to prioritize them. With some 1,100 bills pending in the House, the legislation to end child marriage can easily go overlooked – unless you join us and create a groundswell of support.
Please contact your state legislators and let them know you expect them to prioritize H5387/S398. Let’s end child marriage in Rhode Island. This week.
Fraidy Reiss is a forced marriage survivor and the founder/executive director of Unchained At Last, a nonprofit that works to end forced and child marriage in the U.S. through direct services and advocacy.
Rep. Julie Casimiro has been a member of the Rhode Island House of Representatives since 2017. She represents District 31, which includes portions of North Kingstown and Exeter.
