Child brides call on US states to end ‘legal rape’

US laws permit the legal rape of thousands of teenage girls every year, survivors of child marriage say, but momentum is growing to end underage marriage in more than a dozen states.

Child marriage, more commonly associated with developing countries, was permitted in every US state until this year when the Atlantic coast states of New Jersey and Delaware enacted blanket prohibitions of marriage before the age of 18.

“I don’t understand how other countries comprehend that it’s wrong, but in our country somehow it’s right,” former child bride Sonora Fairbanks told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “I think it’s literally sexual assault… it’s legal rape.”

Globally 12 million girls marry before the age of 18 every year, says Girls Not Brides, a coalition working to end child marriage which the UN regards as a human rights violation.

Campaigners say children married young are more likely to leave school, get divorced, experience domestic abuse and mental health problems and live in poverty than those who marry later.

The majority of US states do not lay out a minimum age for marriage if statutory exceptions are met, such as parental or judicial consent or in case of pregnancy.

But at least 20 state legislatures are likely to weigh reforms next year, experts say.

Child marriage survivors often say they were forced to marry against their will, particularly if they were pregnant to avoid the stigma of giving birth outside wedlock.