Child Marriage havens emerging across America (2024)

As more states make child marriage illegal, the places where it is still lawful are emerging as havens for ceremonies which can devastate the lives of young people. A Newsweek investigation reveals the disturbing reality that a lack of unified action against child marriage can establish.

Californian Sara Tasneem was just 15 when her father arranged for her be married in a spiritual ceremony to a stranger almost twice her age.

She was visibly pregnant, she said, when they left the San Francisco Bay Area in the mid-90s to embark on a road trip to Reno, Nevada, where she was legally married. "Nobody asked me if this was something that I wanted," she told Newsweek.

"I was a very petite teenager and I was clearly pregnant... "Nobody asked me, 'do yo want me to call your mom?' Nothing. That day, basically, I signed everything away."

At the time, Nevada law permitted minors to marry with the consent of one parent.

"It only took a signature from a parent or guardian, basically on a permission slip that was notarized," she said.

The marriage certificate meant that her mother—who was not aware of the marriage until after it occurred—could no longer seek statutory rape charges against her husband.

From then, she was controlled in every aspect of her life, she said. When she became pregnant a second time, she was devastated. "I was so upset because I knew this was just one more thing that was going to keep me trapped in this marriage," she said.

As a minor, she could not file for divorce herself or seek refuge at a domestic violence shelter.

It was seven years before she was able to leave her husband, she said, and another three before she could divorce him. "There's just so many barriers for minors to escape a marriage that it actually creates an impossible legal trap for them," she said.

Tasneem, now 43, said she was stunned to find out while working on a research project in 2017 that marriage for those under 18 was legal in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia.

Since then, she has been advocating to end child marriage.

Nearly 300,000 children, some as young as 10, were married in the U.S. between 2000 and 2018, according to Unchained At Last, an organization working to end child marriage in the U.S. The vast majority were young girls wed to adult men, the organization said.

Child marriage is defined as a marriage where at least one of the parties is under 18. The United Nations calls it a human rights violation and a form of forced marriage, given at least one or both parties have not given their full, free and informed consent.

It leaves minors open to abuse and vulnerable since they have limited legal rights, advocates say.

But since 2018, 12 states have ended child marriage, raising the legal age of marriage to 18. New Hampshire could soon follow—legislation to end child marriage has been approved by the New Hampshire House and Senate, and is awaiting Republican Gov. Chris Sununu's signature. Sununu's office has been contacted for comment via email.

Meanwhile, a bill to prohibit child marriage is pending in California.

But those advocating to end child marriage say that while progress is being made, it is not happening fast enough. The patchwork of state laws in the U.S., they say, makes it easy for minors to be transported to be wed in states where child marriage remains legal.

"It's always been very easy to do, and it always will be easy to do," Fraidy Reiss, the founder and executive director of Unchained At Last.

"When one state ends child marriage, often you'll see in a neigboring state that still allows it, or even a few states over, you'll see those numbers increase...I would say a fairly large percentage of the survivors that we work with were not married in the state where they live."

She noted that data compiled by Unchained At Last found three minors were married in Maine in 2020, but that number tripled to nine in 2021, the year that Pennsylvania, New York and Rhode Island and New York ended child marriage.

The solution, she said, is for every U.S. state and the District of Columbia to raise the minimum age for marriage to 18, with no exceptions.

If New Hampshire becomes the next state to end child marriage, it leaves Maine as the only state in the Northeast where a 17-year-old can be legally married with parental consent. The state last year raised the minimum marriage age to 17.

Marriage tourism "is a big business," Reiss said, adding it's why many states do not impose residency requirements for weddings. "Maine now needs to be very concerned that it doesn't become the new destination state for child marriage.

Girls "are only as safe as the weakest law allows them to be," Casey Swegman, director of public policy at Tahirih Justice Center, told Newsweek.

"There are still a lot of states that allow child marriage that have no residency requirement whatsoever. So minors can be brought from states with strong laws into states with weak laws, be married in that state, and either remain in that state or be brought back to their state of residency... we have sort of a mishmash of laws on this in the United States, but more likely than not, their marriage will be recognized in the state where they live."

States collect and report data on marriages differently, and some do not collect residency information, making it difficult to know how many minors have traveled out of state to get married, Swegman said.

But she said that when Virginia strengthened its marriage laws in 2016 to make it harder for minors to marry, neighboring Maryland saw an uptick in child marriages.

"A couple of years after Virginia strengthened its law the first time, we did dig in with Maryland on that cross-border dynamic, and we did see an uptick," she said.

"I think we will unfortunately see more of that, as more states strengthen their laws. And so it's really important to us that all 50 states get to 18. So no one state or jurisdiction becomes the quote, unquote, destination for child marriage."

Tasneem advocated for legislation that ended child marriage in Washington. She called it a "huge win," but said she fears it means that many children will be transported to her home state of California.

"Because of the legal patchwork, adults who want to marry children can shop around and find states that will allow it," she said.

"Now that Washington has ended child marriage, of course the predators will travel, they can go to California and easily get married. Unfortunately, California has no age floor to get married with parental consent and judicial review." People view those as safeguards that will help minors, she said, but they "actually hurt minors because most minors who are being forced into marriage are being forced by their parents."

Swegman said she is most concerned that Washington, D.C. will become a major destination for child marriages.

Washington, D.C., "an incredibly lax law," she said. "Sixteen and 17-year-olds can get married with the consent of just one parent, and without having to go before a judge.

"Our nation's capital is actually sitting at the center of this region, as sort of wide-open destination, quite frankly, for anyone who would want to marry a child easily," Swegman said.

Reiss said that some parents won't simply travel to the nearest state that allows child marriage, but may travel further to where laws are most lax.

"You have to pass simple, common sense legislation that costs nothing, harms no one, to end a human rights abuse that destroys girls' lives and creates a nightmarish legal trap for minors."

Some minors view marriage as a way out of the foster care system or difficult home lives. And opponents to child marriage bans view it as a solution to teenage pregnancy, according to Hayat Bearat, interim director of the Domestic Violence Institute at Northeastern University, told Newsweek.

Tasneem said her case is not an exception and that she and others who were married while under 18 experienced abuse in their household before their marriages.

"I'm in the majority of people who this happens to," she said. "It happens to girls, marrying adult men, who are taken out of school like I was, who have multiple children against their own will, who have no ability to leave the marriage.

"And when they do leave the marriage, they often face poverty, and raising children on their own or in the system. This is a legal situation that we can actually change."