Every state, including West Virginia, should ban child marriage to protect girls from harm

West Virginia has one of the weakest marriage laws in the region.  Currently, 17 states ban child marriage entirely. News flash: West Virginia isn’t one of them.  Thirty-three states still permit it with exceptions. Some still have no minimum age. That’s shocking. It protects predators over a girl’s safety. 

Virginia and Pennsylvania completely banned marriage for minors. In Ohio and Kentucky you can be as young as 17 with judicial approval. In West Virginia it is sixteen-year-olds with parental consent. 

Here’s the shameful reality: Republicans claim to protect children, but actions speak louder than words. They continue to thwart efforts to fully ban child marriage. Instead, they passed a compromise bill (HB 3018) that still legally allows 16 and 17-year-olds to be married off. 

Would more female legislators make a difference? Studies conducted by the nonprofit Unchained At Last say yes. They show a correlation between higher females in politics and stronger marriage laws. If you didn’t know, West Virginia has the lowest representation of female lawmakers in the nation. 

Del. Kayla Young (D-Kanawha) has been a lead sponsor of bills to ban child marriage. She told 13News: “I’ve had county clerks reach out to me to tell me like, ‘hey, this is still a problem because so many out-of-state folks are still coming here to get married because we’re a border state for so many other states who have banned child marriage.” 

Here’s an example to back that claim: you may have heard of the abusive home uncovered in Ohio this month dubbed “The House of Horrors.” Sixteen children were found starved in a room. Some wonder if the mother was also a victim, forced to give birth year after year. You see, at age 15, she was taken to Mason county WV, to wed where it was still legal. 

Does this sound like human trafficking to you? The United Nations says yes. Call it what it is. The UN considers child marriage a form of forced marriage because children lack the legal maturity to provide free and informed consent. 

The United States is the only UN member state that has not yet ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child which reaffirms that the minimum age limit should be 18 years for marriage.

Think about it: Minors lack full legal autonomy, making it difficult to leave abusive environments, sign leases, or access domestic violence shelters.  Also, teen brides  are often robbed the chance to finish school and have a higher risk of poverty. 

And in a world where the rapist is shamed less than the girl he raped, teen marriages often serve as a sinister rape loophole. Far more often than not, the bride is a teen and the man is an adult. A landmark joint study by McGill University and advocacy groups, found more than 66,000 U.S. child marriages since 2000 involved ages or age gaps considered sex crimes. 

Our leaders provide shameful examples:   President Donald Trump–and the richest man on earth–Elon Musk–have 19 children from 7 wives between them. And Trump has been accused of rape by well over a dozen women since the 1970’s including his ex wife Ivana in a sworn deposition. On this note, finally, in 2024, spousal sexual abuse in West Virginia was criminalized. Took a while…

The point is simple: our girls cannot wait. They are being harmed. 

In conclusion, I’ll share a true story: I was giving an elderly woman a ride in Kanawha County. I asked about her life. She shared she was raped as a young teen and pressured to marry the rapist. She is his care-taker 24/7. She only leaves the house to go to the grocery. They have one son. Sit with that for a minute. She was married off to her rapist. So many other West Virginia women are forced into the same horrific fate. 

Our girls deserve a better West Virginia. When will our legislators stand up to protect them? The time is now.