About 4,500 children were married in Virginia between 2004 and 2013, according to the Tahirih Justice Center. Ninety percent of the children married were girls, and the vast majority married adults. Nearly 100 of them married an adult more than 10 years their senior.
“A lot of people, when they first think of [child marriage], they think, ‘Oh, this is something that happens somewhere else,’ and they don’t realize that this absolutely is happening here,” Virginia Rep. Jennifer McClellan told TakePart. “The most disturbing [case] was a 13-year-old pregnant girl. When she showed up at the court, somebody should have said, ‘Hold up. She is pregnant—someone committed a crime.’ Instead, she was given a marriage license and married the person who committed that crime."
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