[ExI] child marriage, usa

Tue Nov 20 05:14:53 UTC 2018

Have I personally met any people under 16 who are married? No.

However one of my uncles is an IFB pastor and had a very young girl marry a much older man. I don’t have a concrete number, but she was definitely under 16 and he was definitely at least late 20s, perhaps slightly older.

You would think that she can sue for divorce, but the truth is that 16 year olds who get married cannot rent an apartment, their older partner must do it for them, because they are not legally adults. 

I would think that it would count as statutory, because we have established that spousal rape exists, right? Marriage does not automatically give a person a right to have sex with their spouse, and statutory rape is the idea that someone is too young to be able to give consent, so it seems that wouldn’t actually change based on marriage status. I assume it’s technically illegal but no one is going to prosecute. 

> Be careful with averaging because over that period of time, the rate dropped and seems to have dropped quite steadily

Now you’re right there, of course. But again, I think that regardless, even if it is a very small number of people, they do require advocates and special attention due to the nature of the thing, even if it’s only a handful of under 16s per year. 

And I’m not trying to be controversial, however the reason I think that resources for these girls is so important, are because of the circumstances surrounding many of these very young marriages — often sexual abuse by an older man resulting in pregnancy, or due to an extreme religious system. 

For example, Warren Jeffs had one wife who was twelve. Now of course, he claims it was spiritual and he did not have sex with her. But do I believe him?

“Mildred "Millie" Blackmore was just 13 years old when she married Jeffs in 2004. Canadian authorities tried to locate her years later, and according to her brother, she had returned to her native polygamous community in Canada. He told The Salt Lake Tribune that she appeared to be loyal to Jeffs as of November 2016. Authorities were also searching for Canadian natives Alyshia Rae Blackmore and Nolita Colleen Blackmore, who both married Jeffs when they were 12.”

Clearly these are a very serious thing which deserve attention, even though I believe they really are on the trend downward. Though, also, these are not legally recognized marriages, I don’t think, as polygamy is illegal in the States. So, the number of de facto child marriages may be higher than the official numbers might lead us to believe.

SR Ballard

> On Nov 19, 2018, at 7:04 PM, Dan TheBookMan <danust2012 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> On Nov 19, 2018, at 3:51 PM, SR Ballard <sen.otaku at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> The referenced statistics can be found in this article: http://apps.frontline.org/child-marriage-by-the-numbers/
>> 
>> If 1% of 200K married in 15 years are 13 years old, then that’s still more than 100 per year.
> 
> Be careful with averaging because over that period of time, the rate dropped and seems to have dropped quite steadily. The three states I looked at (Mississippi, West Virginia, and Washington) showed a mostly steady drop (Washington had an early small uptick then declined and never got up to 2000 levels again). And the national level matches this pattern. It’s kind of like averaging deaths from smallpox between 1900 and today. (Of course, this analogy is overstated, but that’s for effect. ;)
> 
>> Maybe that’s not a “crisis” but it is (or can be) a problem.
> 
> Peron does agree child marriage is a problem. He stated that a few times in his piece. He even has a problem with teens who aren’t underage getting married. (And I’ve seen a few of those marriages going belly up, though I know of one case where it’s being going strong for a decade or so... And, no, that’s not me.;) I was surprised it went on at all in the US and presumed all of it was the 16 year old getting pregnant and marrying her 17 year old paramour. And mostly that seems not far from the truth. But let’s be careful of finding out what the actual base rate is, what the trends are, and not get caught up in thinking that this is 9 year old girls being married off to creepy old men.
> 
>> Can you sue for divorce at 14, or do you need your parents to do it? And if you have sex with your husband, is it statutory rape? 
> 
> You’ve reached the limit of my knowledge. I imagine the sex issue is not a problem given that the state is blessing a relationship that typically involves sex.
> 
> I don’t know about divorce, but I reckon if the court is approving the marriage that that’s where the issue would be settled, even if there’s no parental approval. I don’t know enough about the low end — which is an extremely small number of people considering that we’re talking about a country of 326 million people. How many married 13 year olds have you met — presuming you live in the US? I don’t believe I’ve met any.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Dan
>    Sample my Kindle books at:
> http://author.to/DanUst
> 
> 
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