(This is a story, but it is factual to the extent that something like this is entirely possible given the current legal status in parts of the United States as regards child marriage)
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I was not invited to the wedding. I do not know anyone who
was. Nobody I spoke to afterwards had any idea that a wedding was going to take
place – certainly none of her friends or my fellow teachers at Cedar Vale High
School, Colorado, where Jasmine was a pupil. One day she was in my class and by
the end of the next she was somebody’s wife and had vanished from view.
She was only 15 years old.
Of course, the school made enquiries when Jasmine failed to
show up for classes. It was just not like her to bunk off school. She was one
of our brightest students – she always got excellent grades, she enjoyed
learning and she had high ambitions. She wanted to be a lawyer and none us had
any doubt that she would get exactly where she wanted to go in life. When we eventually
heard from Jasmine’s parents that she had got married and would not be coming
back to college, we simply could not believe it. That was why I started a few
investigations of my own.
What astounded me was the discovery that nearly everything
about the marriage was legal and above board, and that there was nothing that
anyone could have done to prevent it.
Jasmine’s family – unknown to us at the time – were members
of a religious group called the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-Day Saints. One thing that these people usually insist on is home
schooling, but Jasmine’s parents had let her attend our school, at which she
had thrived. However, somebody had found out about this breach of the rules and
reported them to the church, which decided to take drastic action.
As most people know, the Mormons – by which name the
Latter-Day Saints are generally known – practiced polygamy in their early days,
but have not followed this practice since 1890. Indeed, they would now
excommunicate anyone who took a second wife, which would also break US law.
However, the Fundamentalist Church is a Mormon offshoot that somehow manages to
get away with it. Not only that, but wives are “placed”, which means assigned
to a husband in an arranged marriage requiring the permission of neither the
wife nor her parents.
Amazingly, in many states including ours, this sort of
marriage is perfectly legal if a judge says it is and nobody mentions the
little matter of polygamy. It doesn’t matter what the parents say, and the
views of the girl – if she is underage – are not even taken into account. She
is a child and therefore not a legal person. If the judge is scared stiff of
offending religious sensibilities, as many of them are, then their decision is
not difficult to guess.
We heard that Jasmine had gone to a husband on the other
side of the state. He already had a wife, so Jasmine was no more than a
domestic slave in the household. She ran away after about a month and found her
way to a domestic violence centre. When she told them what had happened to her,
and how old she was, the people at the centre refused to take her in, because
they could only accept adults. The police were called and Jasmine was taken
straight back to her husband.
It must have been hell for Jasmine. She had lost everything
she knew and loved, her life was one of servitude, misery and abuse of all
kinds. She had no way of contacting her parents and she knew that she would get
no protection from the forces of law and order.
She found a loaded gun in a bedside drawer. In her despair
she must have felt that no other course was open to her than the one she took.
The single shot was heard by a passing cop and that was when the story broke.
I was not invited to Jasmine’s wedding, but I did not need
one to attend her funeral.
© John Welford
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