The report did not state how many of the petitions were granted.įraidy Reiss, executive director of Unchained At Last, a national advocacy group dedicated to ending child marriage, said she believes these numbers are a vast undercount. Los Angeles recorded 44 petitions for child marriage San Bernardino, 21 Orange County, 12 and Alameda between five and 10 annually. Most counties reported no child marriages at all.Īn earlier report to the Legislature in 2018 found higher numbers of marriage petitions over a five-year period in some counties. Just 17 marriages in 2019 reportedly involved minors, and counties reported 11 such marriages in 2020. According to the California Department of Public Health, which began collecting data on child marriages from county registrar offices in 2019, the number is very few. Photo courtesy of Sara Tasneem.Įxactly how frequently young people under 18 marry in California is disputed. The marriage was later legalized in Nevada. Tasneem says she was married to a stranger at a religious ceremony in California. Sara Tasneem, a survivor of child marriage, at age 15. “While we like to think of California as always leading, always being in front of the trend line, this really, really is an area where we are failing to lead and where we are failing California girls,” said Assemblywoman Cottie Petrie-Norris, D-Laguna Beach, author of a stalled bill this year that would have strengthened requirements on counties to report child marriages. Marriage under 18 also contradicts age of consent laws in many states, essentially giving people who commit statutory rape a “get out of jail free” card in the form of a marriage license, advocates contend. As a result, the American Medical Association has called for state and federal legislation to end child marriage. People married as children or teens are more likely to experience domestic violence, contract sexually transmitted infections, have early pregnancies, and end up divorced, research shows. There is no federal law banning child marriage.
The state is one of only nine in the nation that do not set a minimum age for marriage. In California, a person under 18 can marry with the consent of one parent and a judge, following a review of the case that includes interviews with the parties involved. Although the minimum marriage age is 18 in most states, exceptions to that requirement in all but six states leave the door open for children to wed. That was in 1985, but the laws that made Tyree’s marriage possible remain policy in much of the United States. You’re going to do what they say is best for you.” “You’re not going to push back and stand up for yourself. “What’s a young girl to do?” said Tyree, now 49 and living in northern Oregon. Upon finding out, her parents and the family friend, likely aware they could face legal consequences, convinced Tyree that marriage was the solution. Instead, the man repeatedly raped and eventually impregnated her, Tyree said.
The man, a family friend, was supposed to be babysitting Tyree at the family’s home in San Pablo, Calif., while she finished sixth grade, and her parents moved to Texas to start a business. Dawn Tyree says she was 13 years old when her father and stepmother pushed her to marry a 32-year-old child molester.