[♪ Soft, Stirring Music ]
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[Woman soulful vocalizing]
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[Women vocalizing]
♪
[Women vocalizing]
[♪ Soft Violin ]
[Birds Chirping]
[Water Rippling]
NINA VAN HARN: "It is very peaceful here
"with the birds singing sweetly
"and the water flowing softly over the rocks
"I can think here.
"Even though Papa says it's not safe for me, to think, that is.
"The only that shall know of this spot is my sisters.
"It'll be our spot.
"We are both getting older
and will probably not have much more time together."
And I said that because we were getting of the age that,
you know, was going to be to marry.
And so, like our time as sisters in the same household
was coming to an end,
and we knew that was-- that was happening.
[Birds Chirping]
Well, I was known as the black sheep of the family
growing up.
I questioned everything, and that was not okay, ha.
You're expected to do everything your father says,
you know, and never question, and not think.
My father, he wanted one thing for all of us.
If we didn't fit in that goal then we were less favored.
[♪ Soft Music ]
Right around 10, our belief systems
just started getting more and more conservative,
and we became more and more ingrained
in the patriarchy movement.
And that's when our style of dress changed.
It's almost like we started living back in time.
Father is the head of the household,
and, you know, the mother is his helpmeet.
And our place is to help our fathers and our brothers,
you know, until our time come that we're married off.
The concept of marriage,
the concept that I was going to get married,
was a conversation that we started to have
right around the time I was maybe 11.
I told my aunt that I was going to have it so easy
because I wouldn't have to pick my spouse
because my father would do it for me.
You know, by 13,
I was going through curriculu as part of the homeschooling,
that was designed to train me for how a wife should think
and the responsibilities a wife should have,
and that, as a woman, it's a sin to do anything
that is outside of your husband's wishes.
It wasn't long after I turned 18 that my father first said,
"I think I found you a spouse."
♪
[Chickens Clucking]
SARA TASNEEM: I was kind of a creative kid.
I loved to draw.
I had a pretty active imagination.
I wanted to play sports.
I wanted to run in track,
but in track, you had to wear shorts.
Since I grew up in so many different places,
I think it was hard to find a real identity of who I was.
My dad, in his teenage years,
he went through a period where he was struggling
with his religious identity a little bit.
He joined this group and he got really deeply involved.
I think that was part of the reason
that my mom wanted to leave.
She didn't necessarily agree
with The Group and its practices.
I think as he got closer and closer
to kind of the leadership, he got more extremist.
We were taught to kind of obe without questioning.
That was early on, kind of like ingrained,
like, you don't question.
You don't question what the sheikh says.
You don't question what he does.
He kind of went from being a really caring person to,
you know, somebody I just didn't know.
I didn't know him anymore.
♪
Even though she wasn't religious,
she had very strong morals.
She always told me that education was important.
My freshman year of high school
was really when I decided to just buckle down
and focus on having kind of a goal in mind
of--of who I wanted to be.
Had I stayed with my mom,
I would've probably continued on that path.
My freshman year had just ended.
It was summer, I was 15.
When my mom found out
that I kind of had a, quote, unquote, "boyfriend,"
she flipped out a little bit.
She had a conversation with my dad.
My dad wanted me to go out there to visit him that summer.
I didn't really want to go.
I wanted to stay with my mom.
My dad sat me down and told me that,
"You're not allowed to have sex out of marriage,
and you're going to get married."
And it wasn't, like, a question,
it was like, "You're going to get married."
♪
[Footsteps]
FRAIDY REISS: I understand forced marriage
because I myself was coerced into a marriage
when I was a teenager.
But I was not a child; I was 19.
I am Fraidy Reiss.
I am the founder and executive director
of "Unchained at Last."
My goal was to help women
who were either facing a forced marriage,
or already in a forced marriage, and needed help getting out.
And I was shocked when more and more girls
under the age of 18 were calling and asking for help.
In the insular, ultra-orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn
where I was raised,
I was groomed basically from infancy
to become a wife and a mother.
I attended an all-girls religious school
where I received a limited education
that focused on God and cooking and sewing.
I actually had to sign a paper when I was in high school
promising not to take drivers education
or college entrance exams.
I was considered, in some ways, to be a rebel,
although I cringe now
at what I thought was rebellious back then.
I thought I was so bad because I would wear knee socks
over my tights sometimes, under my long, pleated skirt,
to go to school, and I would get caught,
and I would get into big trouble,
"You're wearing knee socks over your tights."
Because when you glance at it,
it looks like I'm wearing only knee socks without the tights.
And that was considered--
you know, that was a big no-no.
We could get suspended for this.
I often think I should write a whole book
just about what Halloween was like
in the Orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn.
Now I can laugh; at the time, it wasn't funny.
They would let us out of school early
and send us home because they told us,
"Very soon, the goyim are going to come to your house
and try to kill you."
And we would go home in a panic, and we would lock the doors
and close the blinds and shut the lights.
And, of course, what would happen?
Somebody would ring the bell,
and it was somebody wearing a costume.
And we were convinced that it was the goyim coming to kill us.
It's very effective, that type of brainwashing
and that type of education, because I internalized that,
and I stayed very far from the goyim.
I stayed very far from the others.
I stayed very far from the outside world
because there was no place for somebody like me
in that outside world.
My upbringing was so separate from boys and from men,
I had very little interaction.
Just looking at the prayer book,
I knew that boys and men make a blessing every morning
thanking God for not making them a non-Jew
or a slave or a woman.
And I knew that because it was in my prayer book, too
So, I would thank God for not making me a non-Jew or a slave,
but then in tiny letters under where the men were saying,
"Thank you for not making me a woman,"
I was thanking God for making me as He willed.
Even Jewish law, it was very limited what we learned.
It was only what you need to run a Jewish household.
What we were told is, if you have a question,
you're supposed to ask your Father
or your husband or a rabbi.
The expectation for marriage is, you are going to marry,
and you're not going to find your own husband.
The matchmaker is going to find you a match.
The matchmaker gets paid
only if the match turns into an engagement.
So, the matchmakers are very-- have a vested interest
in making sure that this turns into an engagement.
My match was a Coca-Cola guy, and I don't drink soda anymore,
but back then, I was a Coca-Cola girl.
We both came from very poor families,
which is why the matchmaker matched us.
So, how could this go wrong?
And when I first saw him,
he was not at all what I had pictured,
not at all the way the matchmaker
had described him to me.
You spend a few hours together over a period of a few weeks
in a very non-intimate setting.
And you have the matchmaker pushing you,
"So is this a yes? Is this a yes?"
And you have your-- in my case, it was my mother.
My father wasn't in the picture--my mother saying,
"Well, you know, we already--
"we already did the research.
I mean, how much more do you need to know?"
You just start becoming convinced,
and you start going along with it, and you start saying,
"Well, you know, these concerns I have,
"I'm just picky, I'm being stupid.
What do I really know?"
You know, adults around me made this decision,
and they said it's the right thing.
[Traffic Sounds]
JEANNE SMOOT: A forced marriage is one that takes place
without the full and free consent of one or both parties.
And it typically involves one or more elements of force
or fraud, or coercion.
CASEY SWEGMAN: Those complex relationships of love and abuse
are really hard to navigate.
And so, as a young person, or even as a 25-year-old,
if you've grown up in that same household
and you don't have a lot of independence,
those threats are incredibly powerful.
They're often the ones that get people to give in.
Coercion in our cases can tak so many different forms.
And some of the most powerful coercion
comes in the form of emotiona abuse and emotional coercion.
We also see situations where individuals have grown up
not able to get jobs or make friends outside of the family,
and then they're told if they refuse,
"Well, you'll get kicked out, and you'll be dead to us."
You have no safety net, and you have no experience,
and you have no income of your own.
The threat of being kicked out, again, incredibly powerful.
[Water flowing]
NINA: I wanted to be a single-woman missionary
and travel the world helping people.
And I told my parents this, and my father's like,
"Oh, you just want to get out of the house.
"You know, that's not really
"what the Holy Spirit's telling you to do.
"You're not strong enough, you're not wise enough,
"you're not grounded in your faith enough
"to go out on your own.
You'll just be tempted and fall into sin."
To be told that, really, that's not what your heart's desire is
and that you're just lying, is crushing.
One day my parents called me up and they're like,
"Oh, we've got somebody for you."
I knew like, oh, I have to give up all of those thoughts
and all of my dreams because now I have to do this
After a couple of weeks, my father said,
"Okay, you need to make a decision.
"You need to decide
"if you're going to marry this person or not.
"Don't forget that, you know,
"we're really expecting you to do the right thing.
"I hope you're not thinking selfishly.
"You need to be thinking of your siblings
"and of your cousins and of being a good example.
"Just remember that to disobey God
"is to be rebellious,
"and rebellion is as a sin of witchcraft.
You know, do you want to be a witch?"
The decision really boiled down to,
leave your family and your faith and be an outcast
and essentially be condemned to hell,
or do the right thing
and retain your family, your faith, your community,
and, you know, make God happy make your parents happy.
FRAIDY: Nobody ever said, "If you say, 'no,'
we're going to kill you."
Nobody ever said that.
But I knew what would happen if I said, "no."
If I said, "no,"
I probably would remain stuck forever single in a community
where being single was very shameful.
And that was, to me, a fate, in many ways, worse than death.
I was just so happy.
I was just so happy and so excited and so ready
for what I thought I knew was going to happen to me.
And--wow, I don't know why that's bothering me.
But, you know, when I look back,
that's--that's one of the things that bothers me the most, is,
how could I have--how could I have been so gullible
that I went along with this so happily?
How--you know, where was rebellious Fraidy that day?
SARA: One of the mornings, I was taken aside.
I just remember him telling me, like,
"That person over there is-- has been chosen for you."
He was older than me.
So, it wasn't like I was talking to a peer.
It was more like I was talking to an adult.
I just remember him saying,
"I don't want to have an engagement.
I just want to get married."
I didn't really know what to say.
So, I didn't say anything, you know.
I wish I had.
The leader of The Group was there,
and he was going to perform my marriage.
And so that was like a really big honor for my family,
for my dad.
On my way up, I remember asking somebody like,
"Well--um, well, where am I going to sleep tonight?"
Because I was thinking,
"Oh, do I need to, like, bring clothes or something?"
And no--like they just looked down at the ground.
The focus was on me.
I had never been the focus of so much attention.
And especially in this type of setting,
you know, you're kind of just--
"You're just a child, you know, just be quiet."
I never thought to question.
I never thought that I had the power to question.
Where I had come from, that was kind of the norm.
I mean, you would just listen.
You didn't really ask a lot of questions,
and especially in this setting,
it wasn't a place to ask questions.
This was a place to obey and, you know, do what you were told.
So, I guess I felt like, for once,
my dad was proud of me, and he wasn't ashamed of me.
And I--I wanted him to be proud of me.
During and after the ceremony,
I was not allowed to talk to my mom.
They basically had me call my mom
and lie to her on the phone,
and tell her a story of--you know,
that I was--I wanted to live with my dad.
Then I was just kind of handed over to this person
who I didn't really know.
I just became his.
I was 15, he was 28.
♪
NINA: I was upstairs in my bedroom
and my mom called up the stairs that he'd arrived.
And my reaction was, "Oh, wonderful."
And I started walking down the stairs
and, all of a sudden, I stopped.
I don't feel anything.
I should feeling... butterflies.
I haven't felt any butterflies;
there's no excitement.
I'm acting excited, but I'm not excited.
I don't want this.
And then I got called again, "Where are you?"
And so I pranced the rest of the way down the stairs,
"Oh, it's so good to see you."
And yet, this feeling inside that I was dying.
♪
You're going through the motions;
it was almost like a play,
like you're performing in a play.
The door is shut behind the bridal party
right before I was going to walk down.
And my dad put the veil over my face.
"Papa, are you proud of me?"
And he looked at me and just said,
"Nina, I am so proud of you.
You look beautiful."
And I was on cloud nine, I was elated,
because that's all I had ever wanted to hear from him.
And then the doors opened, and we walked down the aisle.
There's a lot that day that was, you know, exterior,
that I focused on, versus what was really going on inside.
The reality, that kind of, like, wake-up moment was,
you know, when they said,
"Okay, you may now kiss the bride,"
and, you know, having the veil lifted over my face
and going in for that first kiss,
and wanting to just be cherished and to feel gentleness.
And instead, there was-- it was a very long kiss,
because it was, you know,
trying to force his tongue down my throat.
It was really the first indication
of what was going to follow.
Consummating the marriage didn't have to happen the first night.
That was going to be his instructions.
And then my father followed it up with,
"But don't make him do that.
"That's being selfish.
He's looking forward to this; don't disappoint him."
Hearing this voice in my head like,
"You have to do this.
You know, you don't want to disappoint."
To be essentially just taken and just laid down,
and instead of having somebod discover you
and want to know you and to explore your skin,
you have somebody that just uses you,
without regard to what it feels like for you
My body's not my own any longer.
Now it belongs to him.
And feeling like I didn't really want to share it,
but had to, because there's no alternative.
I'm his wife now.
[Traffic Sounds]
SARA: We were kind of bouncing around
from household to household.
We stayed with-- at my dad's house for a while
and then we went to his brother's house,
and then we went to the sheikh's house,
and then various households.
I was 16, and I was about seven months pregnant.
We ended up driving up to Reno.
It was about like a four-hour drive.
We ended up having like a civil marriage there.
We had a letter from my dad, kind of like a permission sli
that you would send your kids to school with.
So, yeah, that's all it took in the state of Nevada.
[Flag Flapping]
I was very pregnant,
so that's clearly evidence of a rape,
of statutory rape.
Nobody asked me about that.
I was never questioned...
not even once.
[Ocean Waves]
AMY PAULIN: Child marriage is not just a problem
that occurs in countries on the other side of the globe,
but it happens right here in our own very backyard.
Child marriage is forced marriage,
and signifies a pervasive discrimination
against young girls.
Like victims of human trafficking
and domestic violence,
victims of child marriage are forced and condemned
to a life that they did not choose,
with no means of escape,
resulting in physical and mental health problems,
loss of education and economic opportunities,
and an increased likelihood of experiencing violence.
SAFIA MAHJEBIN: Even though, at that time,
we didn't know what the term "forced marriage" was,
we knew that she was being pressured on all sides.
Even though we didn't know what the term "child marriage" was,
we knew that she was going through it.
And even though we didn't know the term "domestic violence,"
we knew that she was marrying a man eight years older than her
who can easily overpower and control her.
And even though we didn't know the term "victim,"
we knew that we had no way
of preventing her from becoming one.
JEANNE: Forced and child marriage is something
people haven't talked about in the United States.
And it's not something that I think people have realized,
until relatively recently,
does happen, how it happens, how many people it happens to
Up to this point, I think many people
have been treating forced and child marriage
as perhaps similar to the way domestic violence was treated
30 years ago or so;
"It's a private matter, it's a family matter,
"it's sort of what that family does.
"It's within the home.
It's not my business, it's not my role."
TREVICIA WILLIAMS: I was picked up from high school
at the age of 14, right after school,
and carried to the Justice of the Peace cour
and married off to a 26-year-old man.
SHERRY JOHNSON: I had the handcuffs actually put on me
to marry my rapist.
DONNA POLLARD: I was targeted as a vulnerable child
and groomed.
I suffered abuse, exploitation, entrapment, and manipulation.
FRAIDY: I founded this organization,
Unchained at Last,
to help people who are in or facing a forced marriage.
And we're almost always able to help the adults.
But when girls 17 or younger call and ask for help,
what's clear is that
there's almost nothing that these girls can do
to prevent themselves from being forced into a marriage,
and there's almost nothing they can do
once they're in the marriage to get out of it.
Almost every U.S. state sets 18 as a minimum marriage age.
But almost every state has exceptions.
JEANNE: What those laws do, unfortunately,
is they provide a number of exceptions
to a minimum marriage age,
which can provide loopholes
for individuals who are too young to be able
to assert their rights for themselves,
advocate for themselves legally and practically.
FRAIDY: There are so many variations.
And in some states, a child needs to go in front of a judge.
In some states, they can just get married
with a clerk's approval.
What we've seen is parents doing a Google search.
There was a national news story last year,
a girl from Idaho, 14 years old, who was raped and got pregnant,
and her father wanted to marr her off to her adult rapist.
He went online, and did a Google search.
And he thought, "Well, where can I marry off my daughter easily?"
Now, Idaho, I would say fairly easy there.
In fact, of the 38 states where we collected the data,
Idaho had the highest rate of child marriage.
But what he discovered is that in Missouri, it's even easier.
So, he took her out to Missouri,
and in Missouri, forced his 14-year-old daughter,
who had been raped and gotten pregnant,
to marry her adult rapist.
What in the world are we doing?
So, our laws are setting up this situation
where girls can be abused and forced into a marriage
but can't take any of the basic steps necessary
to protect themselves.
JEANNE: The Tahirih Justice Center
took a long, hard look at all 50 states
and their minimum marriage age laws
and the exceptions on their books.
And we were really stunned.
Many states, 27 states,
where there is no lower age limit
if the conditions set by statute,
whether that's parental consent or judicial consent or pregnancy
or some combination thereof, are met.
But the variation among them< the kind of inattention,
and, frankly, the feeling in all of those laws
that what was being prioritized was parental control
and not child protection.
The lack of concern that was embodied in these laws
was really stunning when we looked at them.
And so, we put together a compilation of them
and really kind of exposed where those cracks and gaps
and loopholes lie in the laws.
JENNIFER McCLELLAN: I was approached
by the Tahirih Justice Center
A lot of their clients were coming to them
who had been forced into marriage,
were trapped, were in abusive relationships,
were looking for a way out.
And they found that half of their clients were children.
And they found that over a 10-year period,
there were some really alarming statistics of how many girls,
particularly under the age of 16, were married.
RICHARD MORRIS: Mr. Speaker,
I've asked the young lady if she can cite
any specific cases in Virginia
of the forced marriages of the minors that it has occurred.
JENNIFER McCLELLAN: If the gentleman would like to hear,
this was a 17-year-old who had suffered years
of emotional, psychological, and physical abuse
at the hands of her family in an effort to get her
to agree to marry an older man that she barely knew
and had not chosen for herself, at a time in her life
when she only wanted to focus on school
and a wide-open future rather than marriage
to a man that she didn't know.
Child Protective Services tried to intervene,
but they couldn't.
She kept trying to cry out for help,
but she couldn't get a protective order
because she was under age.
The way the law in Virginia was, if you were 16 or 17,
you could get married with your parents' permission.
If you were under 16, and the girl was pregnant,
you could get married with your parents' permission.
There was a defense on the books for carnal knowledge
with a child 14 or younger if you married her.
That was particularly disturbing
where there's an abusive relationship,
because if you have a girl who is married,
in an abusive marriage, she can't get out.
She can't call Child Protective Services
because child abuse is define as between a parent and a child,
not a husband and a wife.
She couldn't go to a domestic violence shelter
because most shelters would see a child show up alone
and consider them to be a runaway.
She couldn't file for divorce or seek a protective order
because those are things that only adults
have the right to do.
So, she was stuck.
We saw that there was a provision
that said once you're married,
you could get emancipated by the court,
which declares you legally an adult.
So, we said, "Why don't we flip it?
"If you're going to get married,
you should be emancipated first."
The pushback came, men mostly, who said,
"If my daughter gets pregnant, she better get married,"
or, "I want her to get married."
And what struck me about that was,
if your daughter is under 17 and she's pregnant,
she's a victim of a crime.
- To remove a parental decision making
of their own minor, their child,
ought to be compelling--
overwhelming, compelling evidence
that we are now removing that from parents.
I think that to remove a parents' rights
and responsibilities
and giving-- now allowing the judge
to make the decision over the parent,
is that really where we want our parental rights to come to?
>> Yes.
- I think that is a huge infringement
on parental rights and responsibilities,
and that's why I will not support this bill.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
- Unfortunately, in state after state,
legislators have either rejected the legislation
and said, "No, thank you, I don't want to eliminate
a human rights abuse that destroys girls' lives,"
or they've watered it down, so,
"Yeah, we'll take out this exception,
but we'll put in the other one and the other one and that one."
And then, you know, we're the ones
who get the calls from the girls
the day after the law passes, we get those calls.
Now the girls, under the new loopholes,
are being forced to marry.
♪
>> Save our children;
3091, we won't stop until it's done.
[Crowd Chanting] 3091, we won't stop until it's done.
FRAIDY: A3091 had overwhelmin bipartisan support
in both houses of the legislature.
>> The legislature passed bil A3091 on March 13th,
and Governor Christie issued a conditional veto May 11th.
FRAIDY: It was common sense.
And then Governor Christie
went and conditionally vetoed that bill.
The reason that he gave is illogical.
What he said is that ending child marriage
would somehow interfere with religious customs.
I don't know about you,
but I have never heard
that requires child marriage.
♪
NICHOLAS SYRETT: Attitudes towards sex play,
I would argue, an inordinate role
in the history of early marriage.
One of the reasons that we have set
our minimum marriageable age so low
is because lawmakers are clearly very worried about girls,
more so than boys, having sex outside of marriage.
♪
NICHOLAS SYRETT: In the early 19th century,
most Americans were not conscious of their ages.
And even if they were,
it was not a central componen of their identity
in the way it is for us now.
We all know how old we are.
We all have birth certificates.
We all are permitted to do certain things
only at certain ages.
So, people moved into adult roles
when they were big enough or able enough
or financially secure enough to do so.
The marriage of people we would now call teenagers,
from the age of 12 through 18,
was quite common in a variety of locations.
It did not attract all that much attention.
Girls, the only stipulation, really,
was that they had achieved puberty,
that their parents were willing, or if they were orphans,
that someone was allowing this to happen,
and that they were capable of keeping a house.
During the 1950s,
the rates of minor marriage,
particularly for middle-class urban, suburban white girls,
the age of first marriage went way down.
It was the lowest in the 20th century.
Obsessed with obtaining the domestic ideal
during this moment.
So, this is the era of "Leave It to Beaver,"
and "Father Knows Best."
The way to be patriotic and to express your patriotis
and your anticommunism was at least in part through
establishing the ideal American home.
Young people were taught in marriage and family
living classes in their high schools
how to be husbands and wives.
Sexual standards have been changing
from the early 20th century, especially during the 1920s.
So, boys and girls, teenagers of both sexes
were experimenting more sexually in dating.
One of the consequences of this was actual intercourse
and then sometimes pregnancy.
But we were still at a moment
when especially middle-class white folks
were not comfortable with the notion
of out-of-wedlock pregnancy, when abortion was illegal.
And so, the result was a shotgun marriage.
♪
- People think of a forced marriage
as somebody holding a gun to the bride's head and saying,
"You are getting married today to this guy, like it or not."
And nobody held a gun to my head.
What you come to realize, eventually,
or what I came to realize eventually, is,
you don't have to hold a gun to somebody's head
to force her to do something, or to even convince her
that it was her own choice to begin with.
What choice you have,
and this is what you were groomed for your entire life,
and then to be told
that I have the choice about whom to marry
and convince me that this is a choice,
when how could that possibly be a choice
if it's-- you can say, "yes,"
to this guy the matchmaker brought to you,
or you can face the terrible repercussions.
What kind of choice is that?
[Street Sounds]
I never signed my marriage license,
my Jewish marriage contract.
Two rabbis signed that.
I wasn't a party to my own marriage.
I was given to my husband.
It was a week after our wedding that he woke up late one morning
and, you know, was enraged at himself for being late
and started screaming and cursing.
In this blind rage, he punche his fist through the wall,
and then he ran out.
And it was that moment, I just stood there shaking
and looking at that hole in the wall and thinking,
the fact that he can do this
over something as small as waking up late,
I knew right then that that was a problem.
I was so, you know, young; I was 19.
You know, I'm still a teenager.
And I didn't know him very well at the time.
I had no reproductive rights.
So, I was not allowed to use birth control,
and I was required to have sex with my husband.
So, within two months, I was pregnant.
I gave birth 11 months after my wedding, to my first child.
Immediately pregnant, and then pretty soon,
I have two kids and no--no money,
no way to support them, no education to fall back on,
and don't even have the legal right
to leave my own marriage on my own.
Really, the only way out would have been
if my family would have taken me back in.
And I could have moved back in with my mother
and been an agunah it's a chained woman,
a woman whose husband won't divorce her.
And yet, when I asked my mother if I could do this,
the answer was "no."
The answer was "no."
And, in fact, her position was,
"You chose him.
You chose this guy."
[Water rippling] [Birds Chirping]
SARA: There was never
a period of time that I can remember
that I didn't go without crying.
Like, every day, I probably cried.
I called my dad kind of when I was at my worst.
He's the one who got me into this mess.
The least he could do was kind of help me figure out
what I need to do next.
At first, he didn't really respond.
And then he was just like,
"Well, you know, you should pray.
God will help you."
And it wasn't like, "Let me help you,"
or, "Let's figure this out together,"
or "What do you need?"
I felt like it was his way of saying, like,
"You deserve this."
Kind of went back to my childhood.
It's like I felt really responsible for it.
For a time, it was just me and my daughter.
You know, I would be at home while my husband was working.
I would take her out for walks,
and we would go around the neighborhood,
and I would see young girls my age walking to school.
I thought, "I need to do something about this situation."
In order to get into this program
that I wanted to go to, I had to have my GED,
so I started going to adult school.
About halfway into the program,
I found out I was pregnant again,
and I was, like, pretty devastated.
I wanted to talk to my mom.
I called her, and she came out.
She came out to see me, like, almost immediately.
Up until that point, I think she didn't know where I was.
She did come back into my life,
and she really encouraged me to continue to go to school.
And so, I kept going to school
until I was like eight months pregnant.
[Water Rippling]
NINA: About three months after the wedding,
I found out that I was pregnant.
And, of course, it's expected
that you get pregnant right away.
I just remember taking the test, and it was positive.
And I thought, "No, it can't be."
And then I took another one, and it's positive.
I just remembered this one tiny, brief thought that said,
"You're really trapped now."
And then I quickly dismissed it
because, after all, I should be thrilled to be having a baby.
He didn't really like me pregnant,
and he didn't like what it did to my body.
And because I wasn't as attractive,
he'd be more prone to giving into temptations
and, you know, of course, that was my fault
for not being available enough.
The day my daughter was born, having her get laid on my chest,
and I looked at her, and I thought,
"This is a little human being that just loves me for me."
And that was a gift that I hadn't had before.
[Baby Coos]
I just remembered it was just really difficult because
all of a sudden, he wasn't getting all the attention.
I had a daughter to take care of and had to nurse
and my body wasn't available at all times to meet his needs.
And he started to really resent that.
Got to a point
where it didn't matter that I was nursing the baby.
And I would just hide her...
and try and disconnect from that whole half of my body.
When you go through so many years
of bottling up your emotions and tossing that bottle away,
what you're left with is a shell that doesn't feel anything,
just this constant tight feeling in the chest every day,
the headaches, the stomachaches, not being able to eat,
just not feeling good, you know,
and then every now and then having this lucid moment.
I remember sitting on the edg of my bed one day,
and I was looking out the window,
and I just said, "Lord, I am so utterly miserable.
What do I do?"
Trying to talk to my dad,
then it's, "Oh, you're just being dramatic,"
or, "You're just overthinking it,"
or, "You know, well, if you didn't say, 'no,'
then it's not assault."
[Chuckles]
"It's a husband's right and duty to--to take what he wants,
"you know, so what-- what's the problem here?
"You know, obviously, you're not doing
what you're supposed to be doing."
So, there's always a comeback, there's always a dismissal.
And, of course, there's also a lot of shame in that.
CASEY SWEGMAN: What we're talking about
is forced consummation, which is rape.
And, honestly, I don't think a lot of people think about that
when they think about forced marriage.
I really have to drive home for people fundamentally
what happens on a wedding night.
And we can assume that nonconsensual sex
follows a nonconsensual marriage.
When you're in a marriage,
it's expected that you will have intercourse
many, many times; that it will be regular
and that it will be at the man's whim.
You find yourself in a situation
where you're facing not only a rape on your wedding night,
but ongoing sexual abuse and sexual assault
within your marriage.
Short-term devastating effect are abuse,
the end of your education, isolation, sexual assault.
The long-term effects are all of those things
multiplied over years and feeling financially disabled
and feeling incredibly, inextricably tied to this person
because of how long you've been forced to stay,
and the legal ways in which you're now tied to them
through marriage, through children, et cetera.
[♪ Soft Piano ]
[Kids Chattering]
[Dishes Clinking]
NINA: When you realize
that the people that you look to as your protectors
are more like your prison wardens,
it's a terrifying thing.
When you realize that, at any moment,
someone can just barge in and take your body...
it's a terrifying thing.
SARA: When you're a kid,
and then you're forced into something,
you don't know why it's wrong.
You just feel like it is wrong, but you don't know why.
And it takes you a really long time to figure out why
and who you are.
And, you know, unfortunately,
you know, some girls just never even get there.
FRAIDY: When he first threatened to kill me,
he would describe to me in detail
how he was going to kill me.
And it was very graphic and very scary.
I never had a black-and-blue mark.
I never had a broken bone.
And I think that that's part of why, when I was, you know,
trying to get help from my family, his family,
and rabbis, it was, you know,
people with limited understanding
of domestic violence who were saying,
"But did he beat you?"
"No, he told me he's going to kill me."
"But, honey, he's just young."
I mean, that's what everybody was telling me.
"He's--he's a good person,"
and that's what several rabbi said to me,
"He's a gitte, he's just young.
"He just has to grow up a little bit.
"He'll settle down, and he'll grow up,
and he'll be a good husband."
♪
I used to think the only way out is death.
And I used to think, you know maybe I'll die young,
and that will be my way out.
This is the only way out of this horrible life
that I've been stuck in.
♪
There's something you need to know about me
before I begin.
I am dead.
And I know what you're thinking.
She doesn't look particularly dead, right?
Well, you might want to tell that to my family.
They declared me dead 13 years ago
when I first took steps to escape the abusive marriage
that they had arranged for me.
When I was 27, still trapped in this terrible marriage,
I secretly started seeing a therapist
from outside of the community who, for the first time,
explained to me what domestic violence was,
and also explained to me that I had legal rights,
that the police would protect me from this man
even though he was my husband,
which is something I hadn't known.
I believe I was the first person in the orthodox Jewish community
to walk into the police department
in Lakewood, New Jersey, and ask for a restraining order.
The rabbi actually sent an orthodox Jewish male attorney
to my house who drove with me to family court
and had me stand in front of the judge
and tell the judge that I wanted to drop the restraining order.
And it was that moment standing there,
and in my head, thinking, "No, I'm terrified.
This man standing next to me is not my attorney,"
and not being able to communicate that to the judge
because how could I possibly explain that to the judge
without putting myself in further danger?
It clicked in my head
that there is not a single person in the world
who is on my side who's going to help me.
[Traffic Noises]
NINA: Something was wrong, and I didn't know what it was
I couldn't put my finger on it.
I couldn't identify it.
It finally got to the point where even he noticed.
He's like, "There's something wrong with Nina,"
and went to my father and said, "There's something wrong.
"She's not cleaning the house like she used to.
"She's not wanting to cook like she used to.
"She never wants to go out and do anything.
"She never wants me.
What do we do?"
"Oh, her mother went through this.
We--she needs to see a counselor."
That was my turning point.
And that's when I first started recognizing
that what I'd been dealing with all of these years was,
you know, emotional and verbal and sexual abuse.
She was the first person that explained to me
what a bounded choice is
and how you can be presented with these two choices,
but really, there's only one
that is a feasible choice to take.
You're at the edge of a cliff and they say,
"Well, your choice is you can jump off and die,
or you can come back to safety."
And I could feel this terror building up inside of me.
And I sat there, and I braced myself.
This was definitely forced.
I did not want this.
I do not want this.
This is not my life.
I did not choose this.
I cannot stay here.
SARA: I still felt trapped,
even though I was going to school
and even though I did have visions and goals
for the future.
I started to understand that I didn't want to be with him.
The Group really expressed a lot of dismay.
"Why do you need to go to school?"
Like, "You don't need to do that.
You're--you're a mom now," you know?
"You should be at home with your daughter
and taking care of your husband."
That was kind of when I started really understanding
that I didn't have to listen to them if I didn't want to.
I was like, "You know what?
"I don't need to do this anymore.
I'm--I'm done, you know, I'm just done."
- The dissociative state pretty much disappeared,
and all the little voices in my head went away,
and I could just hear one voice.
♪
[Dog Barking]
FRAIDY: I couldn't leave overnight.
I took five years where I not only saved up cash,
but also, I went online,
and I did a search for a college in New Jersey
and found a school called Rutgers University
that seemed like a good school,
and submitted my application and went.
SARA: The plan was that he was going to take the kids
back to his parents' house for a while,
while I got myself together.
I didn't know my rights as far as divorce goes
in the State of California.
I was still a kid, I was 22 or 23 at the time,
so I didn't know too much about life.
NINA: I knew that I had to be very, very careful
and that this was going to take some time and some planning.
And then to see that growing desperation
where you're being deceived, you know,
allowing the devil to take control,
"You're not following God's will."
He just thought I was being more and more distant.
So, he started, like, canceling my appointments last minute,
stopped, you know, communicating himself with my counselor;
started saying, "Well, you're not going to see her anymore.
"Instead, I want you to see my pastor.
"And your father and the pastor and I,
we're going to figure it out for you."
And you start to respond to a person with open eyes
and to realize how much of the communication had been--
was to get me confused, to get me to doubt myself.
And I wasn't doubting myself anymore,
and I was standing up for myself.
- I think his thought process was that, you know,
she's just going to completely fail and come running back.
But that didn't happen.
I went to work.
I rented a house that summer.
And I got the kids enrolled in school,
and that's when I filed for divorce.
FRAIDY: On Shabbos morning,
he would go to shul, to synagogue,
and he would get drunk,
and he would come home drunk, in a rage,
and he's pounding on the door.
I'm sitting on the floor of my daughter's room.
I had my arms around my daughters.
Suddenly, I just said, "Why am--why am I taking this
"Why am I sitting on the floor in a corner here, cowering?
This is ridiculous."
So, I stood up, and I--and I yelled--
I opened the door, and I said to him,
"You have to stop screaming, stop cursing, stop threatening.
And if you don't," I told him, "I'm going to take the kids,
"and I don't care that it's Shabbos,
we're getting in a car, and we're leaving."
If you openly violate the law of the Sabbath in public,
like driving in a car where everybody can see you,
that's punishable by death.
And he didn't believe me.
So, he continued screaming and cursing and threatening.
So, I said, "Kids, get in the car, we're going."
NINA: It took about six weeks to get everything ready.
And in between that time, I was able to talk to a lawye
and get a restraining order,
met with a local women's shelter to make a safety plan to leave.
That was just a really nerve-wracking several hours.
I had applied for a restraining order,
and it had gotten approved but had not been served yet.
I'd kind of left a note that just said we had gone
and that I was done,
and that I was not going to b manipulated and controlled
and I was going to be free,
and that I had left with the children
and that we were going somewhere safe.
♪
FRAIDY: We drove to the mall.
And my kids had watched only one movie
in their whole lives at that time.
Later when, you know, Sabbath was already over,
I figured, you know, he's had enough time
to process what I just did and to calm down, I hope.
Figured I'll go back home and, you know, see what's going on.
I came back home, and he was gone.
And so, while he was gone, I changed the locks.
And then when he came back, you know, he rang the bell,
"Honey, I'm home."
And I said to him,
"I have tasted life without you, and it is sweet.
You're not coming back."
And that was it.
I filed for divorce soon thereafter.
[Woman Vocalizing]
[Birds Chirping]
[Children Chattering]
NINA: Finding an attorney that was willing to work with me
and said, you know,
"This really sounds like you have grounds for an annulment.
"This is going it be a really steep, uphill battle
There's no guarantees that this is even going to happen.
An annulment hadn't really been done before, not a civil one,
and particularly for a forced marriage.
There was no statutes, no case law
that they could go by.
So, they would have to kind of keep defaulting
to what they would do in a divorce,
which really, you know, doesn't help a forced-marriage victim,
somebody that's trying to get out of this.
The judge did, in fact,
see that there was evidence to grant an annulment
and that there was grounds for it.
My attorney was like-- had this elated moment
because he--he knew what the process was,
and I was still like hesitant to believe in it.
And he was like, "We're going to get it.
"Nina, we're going to get it.
You know, you're going to get the annulment."
Now that this case is on the record,
is on the books, other people can reference this case.
There is now essentially, like, case law
because, you know-- because of this win.
SARA: I really wish I had somebody
that knew what they were doing, that could have advised me
what my rights were at that point.
And I thought for sure, like,
somebody would've said something like,
"Oh, you were 15 when you got married, so..."
I thought maybe there would've been some easy way out.
But there wasn't; it was really hard.
It took me three years to get divorced.
[Traffic Sounds]
My mom was a significant emotional support
when I was trying to rebuild my life.
She was like, "You know what?
"I'll help you with the kids.
"Go back to school.
"Do what you need to do.
I'm here for you; I'm your mother."
Not everybody is as lucky and not everybody has that support.
And that's--that's significant because that means
that they're potentially trapped
in marriages that they feel they can never escape.
I started getting involved in advocacy
about a year and a half ago.
As I did my research, I found out that, yes, in fact,
it is okay for minors to get married in this state,
and there is no age limit.
I feel really strongly that marriage should be
for two consenting adults
who actually really want to get married--ha-ha--
for all the right reasons.
There shouldn't be any coercion involved.
And coercion is-- easily happens with children,
because they are children.
And there needs to be more protections out there,
and I--I won't stop talking about it
until, you know, something changes.
FRAIDY: You know, it was this really terrifying
and exhilarating journey,
discovering the whole big outside world
beyond the insular community where I had been raised.
I mean, I didn't know the first thing about the world.
I didn't know who The Beatles were,
didn't know what the Muppets were,
and then also recovering from the trauma and rebuilding life.
Suddenly being alone in the world
with just two daughters relying on me
was--was certainly scary for a long time, maybe still scary.
About six years ago, I got to the point
where I was able to buy a small house for myself
and my two daughters, a little Cape Cod
that we very ambitiously call the Pa
I'm fairly certain I'm the only woman
in the history of my family ever to buy her own home.
[Footsteps]
I do--I do love to run.
I'm a runner, so that's how I keep sane.
And it's not always easy work here at Unchained at Last,
as you can imagine.
There are a lot of sad stories, a lot of sad stories,
and especially the children who call and ask for help
and I'm unable to help them.
That really weighs on me.
And so, you know, going-- going for a run in the morning,
a five-mile run does wonders for the soul.
[Footsteps]
- Getting out and feeling like, okay,
I've just got to be a single mom,
and that's going to be my life, I'm going to miss, like,
never being able to really fall in love
with somebody that I want to fall in love with.
When love did find me,
it kind of caught me by surprise.
To make that conscious choice and to feel like every day
I have a choice, you know,
and every now and then, he'll ask me, and he'll be like,
"Are you still okay?
"Is this still what you want?
"Because if it's not, you can totally walk away,
"or we can go back to being friends,
and I'll still be here for you."
SARA: My kind of go-to zen place
is just being in the kitchen,
making food for people who I really love
and new friends and old friends.
And I just--I love getting together around a meal.
Trying to see how many people
are coming to my wedding in October,
so I have some RSVPs here.
We've had a lot of time to plan this wedding.
We really kind of set the date out pretty far
because we wanted to just make it special
and make it really count.
So... much different-- ha-ha-ha--
than the first go around.
♪
[Flag Flapping]
[Traffic Sounds]
KEN BOULDEN: I recall specifically
a young girl who was terrified, literally scared to death.
She could hardly speak.
She was 14 years old.
Her mother was coming in to sign
to give permission for her to be married,
and she was there with a male who was 27 years old.
♪
[Crowd Chanting] End child marriage now.
Ask us and we'll tell you how!
FRAIDY: We have to pass legislation in all 50 states.
Good thing I--I don't need to sleep a lot.
Here's the problem:
When a woman over age 18 reaches out,
if she's facing a forced marriage
or already in a forced marriage,
we're typically able to help her.
Well, if she is under the age of 18,
if she leaves home, she's considered a runaway.
The police will return her to her home.
They might charge us criminally at Unchained at Last
for helping.
If we get her to a shelter,
shelters will turn her away typically.
They will not take in somebody under the age of 18.
This isn't happening only in the community where I grew up.
This is--this is a gender-violence issue.
Forced marriage is happening to women and girls
in so many different communities
and cultures and religions and socioeconomic levels.
SARA: My name is Sara,
and I'm a child marriage survivor.
I'm here in support of SB273.
There is no minimum age for marriage
in the State of California.
JENNIFER McCLELLAN: I am pleased to speak today
in strong support of House Bill 799
to end marriage under age 18 in Maryland.
JEANNE: Until about 2011,
forced marriage in the United States
was a hidden problem.
It was one that we are only still seeing
the tip of the iceberg in terms of what's been published,
researched, studied, and made known.
FRAIDY: We are here to send a strong message
to legislators and to the public
that we are not going to stand for child forced marriage.
- The fact that child marriage
is still legal in this country,
I think, should say to all of us
we still have serious work to do here at home,
but also really undermines our credibility, then,
as an advocate on the world stage.
>> We can do this,
by finally ending early forced child marriage,
an unjust, unfair, and archaic practice
that is severely affecting the very core of our nation,
the children of America.
♪
CASEY SWEGMAN: It takes a lot of understanding of abuse
and dynamics and family pressure to really understand
what it can mean to be forced into marriage,
even if there's no gun to your head.
JEANNE: The strength, the heartbeat of this movemen
to end forced and child marriage in the United States
really comes from those incredible survivors
who stepped forward to help lead the movement,
to tell their stories, to drive for a change,
to hold policy makers accountable.
- I do see hope for a future
where there's recognition and acknowledgment
of forced marriage, and understanding
that sometimes what people call arranged marriage
is actually a forced marriage.
I see a future
where there's actually legislation and policy in place
to--to prevent what happened to me
from happening to others,
and to help other women and girls who are trapped
where I was once trapped.
♪
[Women Vocalizing]
CAPTION TECHNOLOGIES INC. www.captiontech.com
♪
[Women Vocalizing]
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[Women Vocalizing]