Advocates say Senate leader Phil Berger is torpedoing effort to end child marriage [View all]

Under amended legislation, 8th graders will still be able to wed in North Carolina, but not buy a lottery ticket or work with commercial ovens


Dr. Judy Wiegand was only 13 years old when her mother accompanied her to get married to the 16-year-old father of her unborn child in Virginia.

Wiegand, originally from Kentucky, told Policy Watch that she was sexually assaulted when she was 13. She had a crush on a boy who asked her to have sex. Wiegand didn’t consent, but she didn’t resist, either. She simply didn’t know what sex was or what the repercussions were. Her family had never taught her about puberty, boys and sex.

Wiegand said her parents felt pressured by the church and other community members for her to marry the boy. “I don’t blame my parents,” said Wiegand, who testified before the Kentucky legislature in 2018, which then raised the minimum age to 17 with parental consent. “I blame the community and the community’s way of thinking.”

That’s why she decided to submit her testimony to the North Carolina Senate Judiciary Committee last week in support of a bill (Senate Bill 35) that originally raised the minimum age for marriage from 14 to 18 years old. However, several key lawmakers (none of whom ever heard Wiegand’s testimony read in committee thanks to a last minute decision to limit witness testimony on the bill to two minutes each) suddenly gutted key provisions aimed at raising the minimum legal age. Instead, the amended bill would still allow teens as young as 14 to obtain a marriage license as long as they were marrying someone no more than four years older. The bill passed the committee.

Read more: http://www.ncpolicywatch.com/2021/05/05/advocates-say-senate-leader-phil-berger-is-torpedoing-effort-to-end-child-marriage/