{"id":1305,"date":"2017-06-08T08:42:31","date_gmt":"2017-06-08T07:42:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.haloproject.org.uk\/blog\/?p=1305"},"modified":"2017-06-08T08:42:31","modified_gmt":"2017-06-08T07:42:31","slug":"usachild-marriage-survivor-i-was-introduced-to-him-in-the-morning-and-handed-over-that-night","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.haloproject.org.uk\/blog\/usachild-marriage-survivor-i-was-introduced-to-him-in-the-morning-and-handed-over-that-night\/","title":{"rendered":"USA:Child Marriage Survivor: I Was Introduced to Him in the Morning and Handed Over That Night"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sara Tasneem was 15 years old when she was married off<\/span><\/a> to a 28-year old stranger. Her parents were divorced, and her deeply conservative father was a member of a Muslim sect in California. When she went to visit him during high school, \u201cHe told me I was going to have to get married and the Sheikh was going to pick who I was going to get married to,\u201d she recalls. \u201cI never questioned my dad, ever.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Thousands of U.S. teens are married before they turn 18 every year. Sometimes the practice coincides with religious traditions, as conservative Jews<\/span><\/a>, Christians and Muslims often encourage early marriage. But even nonreligious adolescents marry before they\u2019re legal adults, sometimes because of a teen pregnancy<\/span><\/a>. Most states require parental consent or the approval of a judge in order for a minor to get married \u2014 but in many cases, the parents are driving the match, and a judge will often defer to the wishes of the parents.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tasneem\u2019s case illustrates how few protections are available to young brides if their parents are the ones encouraging early marriage. She met her husband the same day as their spiritual marriage ceremony in 1996. \u201cI was introduced to him that morning and I was handed over to him physically that night,\u201d she said. \u201cI remember asking, \u2018Where am I going to sleep tonight?\u2019 and they wouldn\u2019t answer me. They just handed me over to this guy that I didn\u2019t know.\u201d She suspects that her husband, who was a new convert to the group, was enticed to the sect by the possibility of marrying a virgin.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tasneem says her father concealed the marriage from her mother by demanding she tell her mom she was going to live with her dad permanently. \u201cThey made me call her and forced me to lie to her on the phone. And for me as a 15 year old, that was horrible,\u201d she recalls, adding that her husband and father stood over her as she made the call. \u201cI didn\u2019t feel like I had the power to stand up to all these adults.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

http:\/\/motto.time.com\/4807611\/us-child-marriage-survivor-story\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sara Tasneem was 15 years old when she was married off to a 28-year old stranger. Her parents were divorced, and her deeply conservative father was a member of a Muslim sect in California. When she went to visit him during high school, \u201cHe told me I was going to have to get married and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[419],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forced-marriage"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.haloproject.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.haloproject.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.haloproject.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.haloproject.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.haloproject.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1305"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.haloproject.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1305\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1306,"href":"https:\/\/www.haloproject.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1305\/revisions\/1306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.haloproject.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.haloproject.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.haloproject.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}