‘Child bride’ bill stalls as some groups push for parents’ rights

FRANKFORT, Ky. – A bill to make 18 the legal age for marriage in Kentucky has stalled in a state Senate committee amid concerns about the rights of parents to let children wed at a younger age, according to several lawmakers.

Known as the “child bride” bill, Senate Bill 48 was pulled off the agenda just hours before a scheduled vote by the Senate Judiciary Committee for the second time in two weeks.

“SO disappointed! My SB 48 (outlaw child marriage) won’t be called for a vote,” sponsor Julie Raque Adams, a Louisville Republican, said in a tweet early Thursday. “It is disgusting that lobbying organizations would embrace kids marrying adults. We see evidence of parents who are addicted, abusive, neglectful pushing their children into predatory arms. Appalling.”

Eileen Recktenwald, the executive director of the Kentucky Association of Sexual Assault Programs, was more outspoken.

“This is legalized rape of children,” she said. “We cannot allow that to continue in Kentucky, and I cannot believe we are even debating this.”

The bill’s supporters have said underage marriages most often involve a teenage girl marrying an older man and may have involved sexual exploitation of the girl.

Adams, in an interview, declined to say who was lobbying against the bill other than to say it involved people concerned about parents’ rights.

Donna Pollard, a Louisville woman who said she was married at 16 to an older man who began sexually abusing her at 14, has advocated for the bill. She said opponents include the Kentucky Family Foundation, a Lexington-based conservative group that lobbies on social issues. Family Foundation Executive Director Kent Ostrander did not respond to requests for comment.