New York Times article about 11 yr old Sherry Johnson in Florida forced to marry her 20-year old rapist by her **PARENTS **and church:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/26/opinion/sunday/it-was-forced-on-me-child-marriage-in-the-us.html?_r=2

The article also details information about child marriages in America generally. Often, it is the child's family that wants the marriage.

It provides a graph of minors who married in 38 states from 2000 to 2010. The three states with highest numbers were Texas, Florida and Kentucky.

Another graph provides the youngest age allowed to be legally wed for all 50 states. More than half the states have no minimum age!

Child marriage in the US seems to be a way to avoid statutory rape laws.

From the article:

Globally, a girl marries before the age of 15 every seven seconds, according to estimates by Save the Children. As in Africa and Asia, the reasons for such marriages in the U.S. are often cultural or religious; the American families follow conservative Christian, Muslim or Jewish traditions, and judges sometimes feel that they shouldn’t intrude on other cultures.

Also, more interesting information about her background. In terms of relevance to Pizza/pedogate, she was not the only church member to be victimized by multiple pastors at her church:

Johnson, the former 11-year-old unwitting bride who is now fighting for Florida to set a minimum marriage age (there is none now), says that her family attended a conservative Pentecostal church and that other girls of a similar age periodically also married. Often, she says, this was to hide rapes by church elders.

She says she was raped by both a minister and a parishioner and gave birth to a daughter when she was just 10 (the birth certificate confirms that). A judge approved the marriage to end the rape investigation, she says, telling her, “What we want is for you to get married.”

Another black eye for organized religion.

Also interesting in that the NYT enabled comments for the article, for which there are now over 1200 of them.