If there was ever a moment when one would think the mere concept of forcing a child into marriage was in the past…
Well, Fraidy Reiss wants us to think again.
Because Unchained at Last, the organization she founded, is working to reverse laws upholding marriage under the age of 18 in 48 US states. She has been successful in helping enact legislation prohibiting such child forced marriages in Delaware and New Jersey.
On a dark, chilly December evening, when many where saying good bye to 2019 and hoping for better news in 2020, Ms. Reese sat down with JSurge, telling her story and explaining the difficult work of preventing the unthinkable act of a forced child marriage anywhere in this world.
She grew up in an insular ultra-Orthodox world where the rights of a young woman are restrictive and to those who simply cannot abide by the strictures, a reason to courageously leave that world.
Her high school required the students sign a paper promising not to take a driver’s test or a college entrance exam. Instead, her limited education, which was centered on God, emphasized homemaker skills such as cooking or sewing.
She calls herself a “devout atheist,” and after learning more of the abuse and fear she experienced, one could say she comes by her new found “faith” with sad honesty. “I had broken up with God.”
On her Ted Talk, she told a D.C. area audience “I was a clueless teenage virgin who had never been allowed to talk to a boy. You’ll marry this stranger, right?
That is exactly what her Lakewood family forced her to do. She was 19 when she was married to a young man she barely even knew. Ms. Reiss told us that she had to take an embarrassing physical exam to validate her virginity.
“I walked down the aisle to my execution wearing a big smile in a God awful gown,” she told her Ted Talk audience.
Since leaving her husband and then divorcing him, she learned that her family was sitting shiva for her, that she was officially “dead” to them.
“I was constantly told God controls everything we do,” she said. “Every minute is pre-ordained. You are supposed to love all people, but that doesn’t jive with the goyim are our enemy that I was constantly told.”
She was the daughter of a divorcee, “not a catch,” she said. Yet the worst fear she and her parents had was that she wouldn’t be married.
At age 19 she would marry a young man who brought with him a violent behavior, yet nobody warned her of this.
“He had a history of violent behavior,” she said. “He would smash a washing machine and punch a wall the day after our wedding. He would break things and smash things. He’d even describe how he would kill me.”
Her ex-husband would also drive at fast speeds and then hit the brakes jerking her violently forward in their car.
“I was trapped,” she said. “I had no reproductive rights, no financial rights and no money of my own. Plus I had no legal right to end my own marriage. My own mother wouldn’t take me back in.”
Ms. Reiss would end up getting a restraining order from a local judge before she would literally escape from her husband, taking her two daughters with her.
In the meantime, all of her family members and most of her friends turned on her, many asking her if she was crazy.
Before her escape she was forced to stay in an abusive, arranged marriage…in America. She was never given a choice about whether to marry. And she was not given a choice about when to marry either. That would happen as soon as she graduated from high school.
On her Ted Talk, Ms. Reiss called herself a “clueless teenage virgin” who was prohibited from speaking to boys. “You’ll marry this stranger, right,” she said.
She was not permitted by her ultra-Orthodox community to use birth control and was required to have sex with her husband against her will. Her oldest daughter was born 11 months after her wedding. She would have one more child after her first.
A young mother with two children, Ms. Reiss’ husband refused to allow her to leave the work and get a job. She was prohibited by him to open a bank account or apply for credit. And to make it even worse, in the Orthodox world she came from, it was only the man who could initiate a divorce, not a woman.
The only way out for her was for her family to take her back.
They betrayed her and refused.
Working jobs that her husband did not know about, Ms. Reiss started saving cash in an empty cereal box. That box would be filled with over $40,000 in about five years. She would become the valedictorian of her Rutgers University graduating class. She started as a reporter and then an investigative reporter for the Asbury Park Press before moving on to an investigation firm.
To her horror, when she did manage to leave the marriage, her family punished her by shunning her in the complete fashion of honor violence.
She would go on to rebuild her life outside of the Orthodox Jewish community. She founded Unchained at Last as an organization dedicated to helping women in the United States escape forced marriages.
Unchained At Last is the only organization dedicated to ending forced and child marriage in the United States through direct services and advocacy. Her non-profit provides free social services and legal counseling to girls and women to escape arranged and forced marriages. Unchained also works at the state and federal level with the goal of eliminating child marriage in the US.
Almost a quarter of a million girls and women were forced to marry in the US between 2000-2010. Seventy seven percent of these marriages involved underage girls forced to marry adult men.
In most states, according to her website unchainedatlast.org, children at age 16 or 17 can get married if their parents sign the marriage license application. States do not ask the children if they are being pressured into the marriage.
Many of Ms. Reiss’s clients are from the ultra-Orthodox community, but Unchained at Last also helps girls and women of almost all backgrounds, Muslim, Christian, Hindu, new immigrants and more.
In some states, the approval of a judge can lower the age of marriage to 15. It is estimated that over 650,000 million women were married without consent as children worldwide.
Children, she said, are nearly powerless to say no to a forced marriage. She gave JSurge the example of a 17-year-old girl who was forced to marry.
“I could hear the terror in her voice,” she said. “I understood that t error. Her own family had betrayed her. If she ran away with our help, they might charge her for running away and charge me for helping her. But we were both willing to take that chance. But there was no place for her to go. We could not find a single domestic violence agency willing to take her in before her 18th birthday. Had she gotten married she would not have been able to file for a divorce unless her parents filed for her.”
Child marriage, said Ms. Reiss, destroys the lives of girls. These children are unlikely to finish high school or go to college. Yes there is a high suicide rate, and chronic illnesses such as diabetes and heart disease.
Unchained at Last was founded in 2011. Over the years, Ms. Reise and her staff have helped women get free be through financial coaching, academic help towards a GED, resume writing, therapy and many other important expert areas.
When she purchased her first home, she became the first woman in her family to buy a house.
“I had survivor’s guilt,” she said. “How was I able to get out?
The truth, using her words, those who oppose her have already “killed” her. They simply can’t punish her anymore.”
For more information Unchained at Last, visit its very thorough website at unchainedatlast.org
