Forced marriage. Child marriage. Honor violence.
Yes, these terrifying abuses happen in America, and they destroy girls’ and women’s lives, Fraidy Reiss, Unchained’s founder/executive director, told a shocked audience of 1,200 at TEDxFoggyBottom 2018 on Saturday.
Fraidy explained how her own traumatic experience inspired her to found Unchained to help other women and girls in the U.S. escape forced marriages.
“We’re going to keep pushing and fighting until we end child marriage, and all forms of forced marriage, in America and beyond,” Reiss told the audience. “Wherever you live, I urge you to join the movement.”
Fraidy’s talk will be posted in the coming weeks on the TEDx Talks YouTube channel, which has nearly 11 million subscribers.
Great news for women and girls: The New Jersey senate voted 30-5 today to pass the bill Unchained helped to write to end child marriage. The bill is still pending in the New Jersey assembly.
Perhaps you’ll recall that last year Gov. Chris Christie conditionally vetoed identical legislation after it passed in both houses of the legislature with overwhelming bipartisan support. But with a new and improved governor in office, New Jersey once again looks likely to become the first U.S. state to end all child marriage, without exceptions.
Marriage before 18 is legal in all 50 U.S. states. Laws in 22 states do not specify any minimum marriage age.
Child marriage often is forced marriage, because before children become legal adults, which in most states happens at 18, they are nearly powerless to say no to a marriage, either before it happens or once they are already in it. They face overwhelming legal and practical barriers if they try to leave home, enter a domestic violence shelter, retain an attorney or bring a legal action such as a divorce.
Further, child marriage has devastating consequences for girls. Marriage before 18 in the U.S. has been shown to destroy girls’ health, education and economic opportunites. A global study also showed marriage before 18 significantly increases a girl’s risk of being beaten by her spouse.
Unchained leads a growing national movement to end child marriage in America by passing simple, commonsense legislation in all 50 states, and at the federal level, to eliminate the legal loopholes that allow and even encourage child marriage.
So far, legislators in state after state have rejected or watered down the legislation. Many have insisted a teenage girl who gets pregnant has no choice but to marry, even if she was raped. Several states have passed legislation to “limit” rather than end child marriage.
Unchained is not giving up. In addition to New Jersey’s pending bill, Unchained is pushing to pass strong legislation to end all child marriage that is now pending in Pennsylvania, Delaware, Vermont and Louisiana.
Some 50 guests joined the Kilpatrick Townsend Women’s Initiative and Unchained At Last Thursday night in New York City for a spring fashion pop-up fundraising reception to support Unchained and a collection of entrepreneurial women vendors who donated 15% of all sales made during the Pop-up event to Unchained. Kilpatrick Townsend generously hosted the event to benefit Unchained, the only nonprofit in the US dedicated to helping women and girls leave or avoid arranged/forced marriages.
Vendors:
Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton is an international law firm with 20 offices and some 600 attorneys that is particularly well known for its intellectual-property practice. The firm, which has won numerous awards for community service, has shown exceptional generosity to Unchained: A team of Kilpatrick Townsend attorneys recently represented an Unchained client pro bono through her divorce proceeding, as she fled an arranged marriage.
The Kilpatrick Townsend Women’s Initiative is focused on driving the growth of the firm’s business, building the firm’s talent pipeline and assuring the inclusion of women at the firm. Unchained is deeply grateful to the Kilpatrick Townsend Women’s Initiative for hosting this fundraising event to benefit Unchained.
We got Trevor Noah. We’re talking about an evening of hilarity, followed by champagne and dessert.
And all proceeds from this Sept. 7 event in New Jersey will help women and girls in the U.S. to escape forced marriages. Doing good has never been this much fun …
Ticket quantities are limited, so reserve yours now.
Trevor Noah @ NJPAC
New Jersey Performing Arts Center
1 Center Street in Newark, New Jersey
Friday, September 7, 2018
6 p.m. Registration
7 p.m. Trevor Noah performance
9 p.m. Champagne & dessert reception
This event honors two of Unchained’s pro bono attorneys, who have helped save the lives of women and girls fleeing forced marriages in the U.S.:
Noah was already the most successful comedian in Africa when he was introduced to U.S. audiences in 2014, as the successor to host Jon Stewart on Comedy Central’s Daily Show. Since then, Noah has become one of the world’s brightest comic masterminds, thanks in part to his Comedy Central special, Trevor Noah: Lost in Translation. In that show as well as his current material, Noah brings a unique global perspective to American culture and politics, with results that are as thoughtful as they are riotously funny.
You can still make yourself smile by donating now to help end forced and child marriage in America.
No, you’re not imagining it. You have been seeing Unchained At Last everywhere you look.
One of the tactics we at Unchained use, as we lead the growing national movement to end child marriage in America, is educating the public through news media. And we’ve seen some major successes recently on that front, in television, radio, print and online outlets.
Did you catch our video op-ed on NowThis? Our live interview on CBSN? Our video on Condé Nast’s Iris? Our op-ed article in The Hill? Those were some of our favorites.
We hope to see you soon at:
Looking for an internship or know someone who is? We’re seeking advocacy, direct-service and MSW interns for the summer and fall. Learn more and apply here.
Marriage before 18 is legal in all 50 U.S. states; laws in 24 states do not specify any minimum age for marriage. Our groundbreaking research showed that an estimated quarter-million children, at least as young as 12, were married in the U.S. between 2000 and 2010.
Children can easily be forced into marriage or forced to stay in a marriage before they turn 18, because they face overwhelming legal and practical barriers if they try to leave home, enter a domestic-violence shelter, retain an attorney or bring a legal action in their own name. The girls who reach out to us for help often end up trying to kill themselves when they learn of their limited options. Further, marriage before 18 destroys girls’ lives, devastating their health, education and economic opportunities and increasing their risk of being beaten by their spouse.
Our advocacy work is making an impact. In just the last few weeks, legislators in Louisiana and Delaware introduced strong legislation to end all child marriage, without exceptions. The bills we helped to write to end all child marriage in New Jersey and Pennsylvania continue to gain support. Legislation to limit child marriage is pending in many other states, and recently passed in a few.
But so far no state has ended all child marriage. In state after state, legislators have defeated, ignored or watered down the bills we’ve helped to write and promote to eliminate the loopholes that allow marriage before 18.
Here‘s what you can do to help change that.
Why have legislators abandoned 17-year-old girls? In an op-ed article published today by The Hill, Unchained’s Fraidy Reiss demands answers from lawmakers who have turned their backs on the girls at highest risk of forced child marriage.
“Marriage at 18 is a right,” Reiss explains. “Marriage at ‘nearly 18’ is a human-rights abuse that traps girls and destroys their lives. Why can’t legislators see the difference?”
Read the full op-ed here.
Kilpatrick Townsend’s Women’s Initiative and Unchained At Last invite you to a Spring fashion pop-up fundraising reception to support Unchained and a collection of entrepreneurial women vendors who have agreed to donate 15% of all sales made during the Pop-up event to Unchained.
Unchained’s founder and executive director, Fraidy Reiss, will kick off the event with a few words about our work to help women leave or avoid forced/arranged marriages, and our efforts to promote social, policy and legal change to end forced and child marriage in America.
Date: April 5, 2018
Time: 5:30 – 8:30 p.m.
Location: Kilpatrick Townsend’s Office
The Grace Building
1114 Avenue of the Americas, 21st Floor
New York, NY 10036
Light food and beverages will be served.
We encourage you to invite friends, family, and colleagues to support this great cause. Register here.
Vendors:
Alder New York
Alder New York is a skincare & haircare line founded by Nina Zilka and David J. Krause designed to leave you feeling your best. We make uncomplicated, effective products that work for you no matter who you are, made from dermatologist approved ingredients & herbalist beloved plant extracts. Because you need clean products that work for you.
Autumn Adeigbo
Autumn Adeigbo designs colorful & conversational women’s wear, sprinkled with African culture while investing in women cross-culturally along our supply and distribution chains.
The collection is sewn in New York City in female-owned production facilities, hand-beaded by women of the Maasai tribe in Kenya, and sold via a community of entrepreneurial women.
All garments produced already have a buyer, reducing both fabric waste & unsold inventory waste. Our brand’s mission is based on ethical & eco fashion, female partnership, and collaboration.
Beth’s Baubles, Bangles, and Beads
Beth has been an active jeweler and artist for as long as she can remember, following in the footsteps of her mother, Edythe. While Edythe focused on modern and pop art, making found art and neon light sculptures, prints, and paintings, Beth’s special love has been working with metals, gems, and fabrics and strings to design and make jewelry. Beth began selling her jewelry at age 10 in a local stationery store in Wilmington, Delaware and eventually expanded her entrepreneurial endeavors to be selling her creations in 22 Saks Fifth Avenue and many smaller specialty stores nationwide.
Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton is an international law firm with 20 offices and some 600 attorneys that is particularly well known for its intellectual-property practice. The firm, which has won numerous awards for community service, has shown exceptional generosity to Unchained: A team of Kilpatrick Townsend attorneys recently represented an Unchained client pro bono through her divorce proceeding, as she fled an arranged marriage.
The Kilpatrick Townsend Women’s Initiative is focused on driving the growth of the firm’s business, building the firm’s talent pipeline and assuring the inclusion of women at the firm. Unchained is deeply grateful to the Kilpatrick Townsend Women’s Initiative for hosting this fundraising event to benefit Unchained.
Unchained’s founder and executive director, Fraidy Reiss, is one of three women who shared their traumatic experiences with forced and child marriage in this video for Condé Nast’s Iris.
Fraidy, Naila and Sara were all forced by their families into marriages as teenagers. And they all later escaped.
“It’s your own family that forced you into the marriage and then that family that wouldn’t let you leave,” Reiss said. “And it’s so hard to understand why.”
Watch the full video here.
Were you one of the some 175 guests who joined us at Unchained At Last on Monday for our United Nations parallel event? We had a lively conversation about Ending Child Marriage in the U.S. and Globally: Progress, Pitfalls and the Place of News Media.
“We need to let our legislators know we are no longer putting up with this,” our founder and executive director, Fraidy Reiss, declared. “It’s time to end child marriage.”
You can watch the entire conversation on NowThis Her’s Facebook page.
The event coincided with the first day of the 62nd session of the Commission on the Status of Women at the U.N. It was our first U.N. parallel event since we were granted special consultative status with the U.N. Economic and Social Council.
The event’s speakers included:
And the event’s respondents included:
Marriage before 18 is legal in all 50 U.S. states. Most states set 18 as the minimum age, but laws in every state allow exceptions for those younger than 18 to marry. Laws in 24 states do not specify any minimum marriage age.
We lead a growing national movement to end child marriage in every U.S. state. We’re promoting strong legislation to end child marriage that is pending in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Vermont and trying to strengthen legislation to limit child marriage that is pending in Arizona, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, Ohio, New Hampshire and Tennessee. Just last week Florida passed a bill we helped to write and promote, but not before legislators amended it to limit, rather than end, child marriage.
So far, no state has passed a bill to end all marriage before 18, without exceptions.
Let’s work together to end child marriage in America:
Whatever U.S. state you live in, child marriage is legal in your state.
That was one of the shocking facts Unchained’s founder and executive director, Fraidy Reiss, explained in a video op-ed about child marriage in America that NowThis aired today.
“Let’s be very clear,” Reiss said. “Marriage before 18 has devastating lifelong consequences. It does not bring benefit; it destroys girls’ lives.”
Watch the full video op-ed here.
