Child Brides, still a possibility?

[radagast37]

Sometimes you became aware of the most amazing facts in the most unsuspected ways. I warn you this may be a long read but necessary if you wanna get the complete picture.

One day I was watching an episode of Law & Order: SVU aptly titled "Good Girl". It opens with 13-year-old Mackenzie having a fight with her widowed stepfather Howard, where she ends up cutting him. The police are called by a neighbor shortly after and Mackenzie is taken in for a hospital check. There was are witness to our first jaw dropping bomb of the episode: the girl is pregnant.

The news shakes her stepfather and the detectives take them to the station to lob a few questions their way. Her stepfather, Howard, is confused by his stepdaughter's admission and pregnancy. Mackenzie, on the other hand, was happy to discuss her baby but not the details of how she got to be that way. All she mentions is that she met her baby's alleged father at Whole Foods and he drove a blue BMW.

This points the detectives at Quentin Dreyfus, the school's drama teacher and the owner of a blue BMW — Dreyfus is willing to give DNA and quick to claim his innocence. Howard, not so much. He holds tight to Mackenzie's claims that she was not raped and that she wants to keep the baby.

The investigation, however is cut short when Mackenzie arrives at the station to inform the detectives her father went after Dreyfus once she admitted to him that the teacher was her baby's father. They arrive a bit too late, with Howard sitting over Dreyfus' dead body, blood on his face and murder weapon in his hands.

By this point you may already found out which is the second bomb of the episode: Howard is the father. He and Mackenzie started a relationship shortly after her wife died which ended on the little girls pregnancy. Her teacher found about the forbidden relationship and Howard killed him to protect their secret.

Howard is arrested for the murder. The DA agrees that Mackenzie's take on the events would give her stepfather a defense for the murder. None of this prepares the DA or the detectives for the third and biggest twist of the episode that comes in the courtroom. When calling Mackenzie to the stand to testify, the attorney for the defense reveals that the 13-year-old is legally married to her stepfather!!!!!. He presents the marriage license for the judge, leaving everybody — including the audience  — a little stunned.

As we found out Howard and Mackenzie got married just a year after her mother died, when Mackenzie was only 12!!! All this apparently being legal in Missouri, as one of the detectives states:

"It's bonkers. Almost twenty states have no minimum age for marriage. Over 200,000 kids were married since 1999, some as young as 11. Turns out Caruthersville is a real hot spot for child brides."

The episode ends without a resolution, as often this series does, but it's left implied Howard will eventually do a long sentence, but just because of the murder charges and not because he was having sex with a 13 year old girl, his stepdaughter no less, and got her pregnant cause she was legally his wife and under the eyes of the law, not a crime.

[Lillab]

It has always bothered me how little shows would research their facts, but well, they are in the business of telling stories and taking viewers on emotional journeys, not teaching about the world. But then the viewers get a false sense of how the world works, as they likewise don't look anything up. You can check these facts much faster than the time it takes to write out this whole post. I mean, come on, the show doesn't care about being accurate or even making sense. This was a story about a man who was doing something legal, but then goes and commits a murder to cover it up? All the run around they did with the police was also just silly. The show clearly doesn't care about reality, just about creating drama and suspense.

In a couple states, you can marry a 15 year old with parental permission. Most set this at 16, and a few more at 17. If you marry a 17 year old girl, it is called child marriage. I find that very confusing when talking about this subject. More often than not, when someone says child or kid, they are referring to a 17 year old. There was a study showing 200,000 kids getting married, like referenced in the show, but the break down was 67% were 17, 29% were 16, 4% were 15, and less than 1% were younger, the youngest reported was 12 in 6 instances. People also like to cry out that it is adults that are marrying these children, and well, that's because in 60% of cases the other party is 18-20.

There are 4 states that don't have a minimum, as well as several countries. However, this usually makes it harder to get married, not easier, as now instead of just getting the parents to sign off, you also have to convince a judge to allow it. Occasionally people get judges to agree to a 12 year old marriage, but it is extremely difficult to get permission for anything younger. The main exception is within Muslim controlled countries, but then you need to be pretty deep within that faith before it is allowed.

While it is already difficult to pull off such a marriage, there are several advocacy groups working very hard around the world to keep making it harder. In the US, before 2018 all states had a parental permission exception, usually set at 16. Because of these efforts, 16 states have now banned that practice, only allowing 18 or older to get married. I think it is a lot of drama and effort over something that is quite uncommon, and very difficult to prove that it was actually causing any problems.

[on the rocks]

Law and Order has been fanning the flames of moral panic for decades, so no surprise to me.

What they failed to include in their statistic about "kids" getting married is most of them are actually doing so because religion.  Not just Muslims, but there are Christian sects that care more about children born out of wedlock than they do about "child" marriage.  It's the cliche of the 'shotgun wedding'. 

[Shatterhand]

Yeah I watched that show for years.  I have actually seen news shows quoting the classic 99% quote.