In the fourth season of "The Handmaid's Tale", which just aired last week, a new character made many viewers feel sad. She was married to an archbishop underage, and at the same time, she was raped by adult men such as guards and bodyguards around her, and finally she was arrested for helping the defecting handmaiden, and she was eventually reduced to a reproductive tool (handmaiden) Esther. Mrs. Keyes Esther Case.
In the play, Esther, because of the continuous rape and abuse of adult men after child marriage, has become cruel and irritable, but he is also very vulnerable. The emergence of this role alludes to the phenomenon of child marriage that continues to occur around the world today and the terrible impact of child marriage on children.
Whenever child marriage is mentioned, the persecution of girls and boys in backward and religiously conservative countries is usually thought of. But in fact, just as the gilead countries where "The Handmaid's Tale" takes place (note: the gilead countries in the story are established on American soil), the phenomenon of child marriage in the United States has been the focus of opposition from women and children for many years.
From Guatemala to Zimbabwe, the United States, which advocates for human rights and children's well-being around the world, has more than 50 states of its own, but allows girls and boys under the age of 18 to marry, and children after child marriage have no right to divorce unless they have the written consent of their legal guardians.
According to The Unchained at Last, a U.S. anti-child marriage group in June, between 2000 and 2018, 300,000 children under the age of 18 were married in the United States.
About 90% of them are women, and the reason for child marriage, casually picking one to tell, may be a history of blood and tears.
Fradiy Reiss Freddy Reiss, founder of The Final Shackles, is herself a victim of child marriage. She comes from a Haredi Jewish family in Brooklyn, New York, one of the most conservative of the Orthodox Judaism, and marriage is done by religious blind dates.
When Freddy was 19 years old (the United States officially reached the age of 21), she was married by her parents to a strange 27-year-old man. The families of the two men came from the same denomination, guaranteeing the purity of the "bloodline". But the marriage was like a nightmare, and Freddy was forced to give birth to two daughters in the face of unlimited domestic violence and abuse.
It wasn't until she was 27 years old, when she told a counselor outside her family's social circle about her experience, that she realized that what she experienced was not ordinary marital friction, but naked domestic violence. She then became the first woman in the family to say no to her husband and apply for a habeas corpus.
However, for the survival of himself and his two daughters, Freddy finally gave in, endured humiliation and burden, and opened a '5-year escape plan'. She begged her family to let her go to college, stayed up for five years to graduate and find a job, and after earning money, at the age of 31, she filed for divorce with her two daughters, left her husband who had been married for 12 years, and eventually became an atheist and established an anti-child marriage organization.
Freddy put it this way in his TedTalk talk: "I became the 'dead woman' in the family. "Rebellion is social death, and child marriage survivors have to experience much more than that.
In addition to religious requirements, the control and persecution of children by child marriage is always linked to the interests of the perpetrator.
When Naila Amin, a Pakistani-American woman, was 15 years old, in compliance with both the New York State Marriage Law and the local religious marriage law of Pakistan, she was legally kidnapped back to Pakistan by her father's three sisters and six mothers-in-law and married to a Pakistani man who was much older than her.
Naila said: "On the wedding night, he kept trying to touch me, and I put a pillow against it... To him, I was a sex slave, a passport that would allow him to come to the United States. ”
Under the U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act, nearly every state in the U.S. allows spouses of minor U.S. citizens to qualify for green cards, and between 2007 and 2017, there were 8,600 petitions for green cards after child marriage.
On the black market for U.S. marriage immigrants, the most expensive price of an arranged green card can reach $80,000 (about 520,000 yuan). The spouse of a child in child marriage can get married after the guardian signs and agrees and cannot divorce voluntarily, and it is self-evident who will be the person who will reap the "fisherman's profits".
Naila was relatively lucky compared to the children who were "sold" to marry, and she later managed to escape back to the United States with the help of her mother and sister and reported her ex-husband in Pakistan, and finally his U.S. visa was canceled.
In addition to the same religion, in addition to the binding of green cards, in the exposed child marriage cases and news reports, there is another kind of child marriage that can be said to be the most typical and common: rape and child marriage in the name of love.
As mentioned earlier, children in child marriage in the United States can marry as long as they have the written signature of their guardians. Ironically, on the other hand, sexual assault and rape of minors is also a felony in various states. So, how do "smart" child abusers justify their crimes? What will the guardian of a child who has been sexually abused do?
In 2016, Heather, a 14-year-old Idaho girl, met Aaron, who was 10 years older than herself. The two talked very well and often played together. But during an outing, Aaron rapes Heather while she is drunk and causes her to become pregnant.
Heather's parents reacted in two very different ways when they learned of it.
Heather's mother immediately called the police and took Aaron to court on charges of statutory rape. The father and her father's family want Heather and her mother to "settle down", not only forbidding her to have an abortion, but also taking her and Aaron to Missouri, where they can marry immediately, and completing the child marriage.
in Aaron
Heather recalls that her father said to her, "You must get married, or the children will have no parents." Heather married the man who raped her on her 15th birthday under her father's plan to preserve the honor and decency of the family.
The mental abuse after the child marriage made 15-year-old Heather anxious, and she quickly miscarried. In a 2019 BBC interview, she said: "I almost married a demon. ”
However, Heather is fortunate to have a mother who has always sought justice for her. Aaron was convicted of child rape and sentenced to 15 years in prison because of the lawsuit her mother had brought before she was officially married. As for Heather's father, he was imprisoned for 4 months for child injury and aided rape, which is also the total length of heather and Aaron's marriage.
(Aaron Left, Right Heather Father)
But by 2019, Aaron had been released from prison after serving 3 years in prison and applied for bail. At the same time, after leaving child marriage, the underage Heather still has not been able to get rid of the life environment of underage pregnancy. At the same time that her ex-husband was released from prison, she was 18 years old at the time and had already given birth to a daughter with her new boyfriend. She bought a pistol and was always on the lookout for her ex-husband who might come to her for revenge.
Religious oppression, green card money, family honor, underage children who have not yet learned the ability to settle down, before they understand their situation, are sent into a married life that is almost sentenced to "death".
Kate Gilmore, Deputy Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund, has said that forced marriage is like a thief, stealing a girl's childhood and her opportunity to participate actively in the world, explore and realize herself.
In the comments section of Fred's speech, the final shackles organization, and in the comment section of the video interview with Naila and Heather, many netizens gave their opinions.
It is impossible to imagine this:
Feeling ridiculous about U.S. child marriage laws:
I think it's "The Handmaid's Tale":
Considering it very difficult for child marriage survivors to escape toxic relationships, I hope that people will not ask them to be "perfect victims":
Others directly attack the environment in which women live:
At present, driven by the initiative of Freddy's final shackles and other organizations, delaware, Minnesota, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island this month have completely banned the marriage of people under the age of 18.
More states, in a state of ambiguity. Politicians need to consider voter votes in religious constituencies, and social consciousness in areas with a tradition of early marriage is not something that can be shaken overnight. There will be more Freddy who fights to ban child marriage, and more people who will defend the child marriage system to fight against it.