Santa Clara County is the first county in the state to call for ending child marriage.
The Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors Jan. 23 adopted a resolution, at the urging of Supervisor Otto Lee, calling for ending child marriage under age 18. The resolution comes with support from local advocates, survivors, and Global Hope 365, a California organization working to end child marriage internationally.
The resolution passed 3-0, with supervisors Sylvia Arenas and Susan Ellenberg abstaining.
The resolution calls on the California Legislature to introduce and pass legislation to “End Child Marriage Under 18, No Exceptions.” Currently only 10 states have passed laws ending child marriages for minors, no exceptions.
“I want to thank the coalition of partners that helped support this resolution and to my colleagues for their support. We hope that the state Legislature adopts legislation that ends the practice of child marriages or establishes a minimum age for marriage,” Lee said. “Santa Clara County continues to lead on key initiatives and actions to lift up our children, and I’m hopeful that joint advocacy statewide will compel long overdue action to protect young girls.”
The question of having such a law is not so straight forward. While some young victims of arranged marriages have been vocal in support, others note the devil is in the details.
“Marriage of an under-age individual, someone under 18, does require both judicial sign off as well as parental consent,” said Supervisor Joe Simitian, whose District 5 includes Los Altos, Los Altos Hills and Mountain View. “The counter argument is, wait a minute, this is a relatively rare phenomenon. And it’s subject to not one, but two checks and balances in terms of the court and the parents having to weigh in. There were also some concerns about the language that said no exceptions, which means no exceptions. … There were legitimate questions or concerns about whether or not in a state of 40 million people, there weren’t going to be cases where an exception should be paid.”
That said, Simitian said he favored the resolution.
“There is a greater likelihood under the existing system that these are essentially forced marriages of minors that really do not involve mature and informed consent by the minor, and so better to delay or defer the decision in an effort to ensure that if there is a marriage, it is because the parties involved genuinely want to be married and are not being coerced,” he said. “It was a more complex conversation that I think might originally have been anticipated.”
Global Hope 365 reports that 12 million girls are married in childhood globally per year, and that in the United States 60,000 of the married minors, a sex crime of statutory rape, should have been considered because of the spousal age difference between young girls and adult men. As of today, California remains one of only seven states that has no minimum age for marriage, despite having a minimum age requirement of 18 for divorce.
“This resolution is so important to highlight that the issue of child marriage is happening here in California,” said Sara Tasneem, a child marriage survivor. “At 15, I was forced to marry a stranger 13 years older than me in a spiritual marriage. Six months later I was legally married and was six months pregnant, which was clearly evidence of a rape. Instead of sending my rapist to jail, the marriage certificate allowed him to continue to abuse me under protection of the law and with no possibility of escape. If I had tried to access lifesaving services, I would not have been able to access them as a minor.”
Noted Los Altos resident Nancy Bremeau, a local women’s advocate, “This resolution brings attention to an important issue that continues to ruin the lives of children, who, once married are highly likely to drop out of school, experience early pregnancies, earn low wages, live in poverty and are three times more likely to experience intimate partner violence.
“The romantic notion of an underage Romeo and Juliette is often used to defend child marriage, when in fact any 17- or 17.5-year-old can wait the additional 6 months to marry, in the same way a 15.5-year-old can wait to get their driver’s license.
“While some individuals point out that there are cultural and religious aspects to allowing child marriage, child abuse, statutory rape and human trafficking risks far outweigh any benefits,” Bremeau said. “And a religious or cultural ceremony is not the same as a state-sanctioned legal marriage contract, especially when a divorce is not allowed before the age of 18, or the direct access to services, retaining an attorney and going through family court proceedings.
“While a pregnancy might seem like a good enough reason to allow a child to marry, the reality is that a marriage under duress is a marriage doomed for trouble, and that 70-80% of all child marriages end in divorce eventually – but it may be many years and several kids down the road before the girl/now a woman can extricate herself.”
