Child Bride Bill Blocked By Conservatives In Kentucky

FRANKFORT, KY — A bill that would outlaw child marriage in Kentucky has stalled after opposition from conservatives who say it strips parents of their authority to decide what’s best for their children. The “child bride” bill would raise to 18 the legal age for marriage in Kentucky, where children as young as 13 have been allowed to marry under longstanding laws.

Kentucky has the third-highest number of child marriages in the country, behind Texas and Florida, according to the Arlington, Virginia-based Tahirih Justice Center, a women’s advocacy center that aims to end child marriages in the United States. As the Kentucky law stands now, 16- and 17-year-olds can marry with their parents’ permission, and in the case of pregnancy, they can marry at even younger ages if a judge signs off. In those cases, there’s no age floor on marriage.

The Kentucky Legislature’s Senate Judiciary Committee pulled the bill from its agenda on March 1, the second time it has done so in two weeks, after lobbyists, including those with the Lexington-based Kentucky Family Foundation, called for changes that would allow 17-year-old’s to marry with a judge’s consent and parental agreement. Overall, the group endorses an end to child marriages.

“We just want the language cleaned up,” Family Foundation spokeswoman Mary Kunze told Huffington Post. “The compromises have all been made. We’re hoping the bill can come back this next week.”

The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Julie Raque Adams, a Republican from Louisville, tweeted her disappointment, saying it “is disgusting that lobbying organizations would embrace kids marrying adults,” according to the Courier Journal. “We see evidence of parents who are addicted, abusive, neglectful pushing their children into predatory arms. Appalling."

Eileen Recktenwald, who heads the Kentucky Association of Sexual Assault Programs, told the newspaper that the way the laws are currently written amounts to “legalized rape of children.”

“We cannot allow that to continue in Kentucky, and I cannot believe we are even debating this is the year 2018 in the United States,” she said.

Among the opponents to the bill is Sen. John Schickel, a Boone County Republican who told the Courier Journal that “decisions involving a minor child should be made by a parent, not the court.”

Donna Pollard, of Louisville, is a strong advocate of the bill. She was 16 when she got married in 2000 to a man she said had begun sexually abusing her when she was 14. Her mother, who married at age 13, encouraged the marriage, Pollard told the Courier Journal.

Pollard called her husband a “perpetrator” in testimony before legislators. They eventually divorced after her became violent and abusive.

"I felt just completely and totally trapped," she said.

Her story is similar to that of Sherry Johnson, a Florida woman who was only 11 when her mother forced her to marry the church deacon who had repeatedly raped her and made her a mother at age 10. Now 58, Johnson is leading a campaign to close a loophole in the Florida state law that doesn't set a minimum age for marriage if a judge approves it.

The proposal, approved by the Florida Senate, hit a bump when a state representative argued that “women” who are pregnant should get married.

Texas, which leads the country in child marriages, has changed its laws to limit mariages to adults.

But the problem of child marriage isn’t limited to Kentucky, Florida and Texas, according to the Tahirih Justice Center. Twenty-five states have no floor on the age at which a child can marry, eight states and the District of Columbia allow county court clerks to approve marriages of minors without a judge’s signature, and nine state expressly permit pregnancy to lower the minimum marriage age.

Wed To Rapist At 11, Florida Woman Seeks End To Child Marriage

The group said that from 2000-2015, well over 200,000 children under age 18 were married in America, the majority of them girls who married adult men. In many cases, Tahirih said, sexual exploitation of minor girls is an issue, an argument cited by the supporters of the Kentucky bill.

The bill contemplates several safeguards against sexual exploitation of child brides, including requirements that a judge check applicable child-abuse records, sex offender registries and domestic abuse convictions. Additionally, judges are required to determine if the minor involved has graduated from high school or obtained a GED, and make a judgment on the minor’s maturity and independence.

It would require judges the discretion to block a marriages if the adult is in a position of authority over the minor, of if the adult has been convicted of a sexual offense. Marriages also wouldn’t be allowed if the judge determined that a minor girl became pregnant or had a child as the result of a sex crime against the girl by the intended spouse.

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