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Tuesday, March 13th, 2018

Hundreds of Missouri’s 15-year-old brides may have married their rapists

Author:     ERIC ADLER
Source:     The Kansas City Star
Publication Date:     March 11, 2018 08:36 PM
 Link: Hundreds of Missouri’s 15-year-old brides may have married their rapists
Stephan:   The idea of marrying off newly pubescent girls, basically 13 to 15 year olds, sounds like something from the 14th century, or even earlier, not something that would be occurring in the United States in the second decade of the 21st century. Yet strangely enough this is a real issue for the christofascist cult, which also opposes gender equality and contraception. In the states where Republicans, the political arm of the cult, are in control child marriage is an everyday occurrence. Did you know that? I didn't, and as the father of a daughter I find it appalling. Here's the story.

Ashley Tidwell (now Duncan) of Steele, Mo., was pregnant and in the ninth grade when she married her 18-year-old boyfriend. “I knew I shouldn’t have been making that decision that young,” she said.
Credit: Ashley Duncan

District Court Judge Gregory W. Moeller peered down from the bench, aghast.

“I was horrified by the case,” the Idaho judge recalled recently.

In front of him, ready for sentencing, Keith Strawn — a father, 6-foot-3 with black-framed glasses the color of his boyish haircut — stood sad and penitent.

Strawn thought he had been doing right by his 15-year-old daughter, Heather, only to realize too late what a massive mistake he had made bringing her to Missouri — the easiest place in America for a 15-year-old to wed.

“I love my daughter very much and never would I do anything to intentionally harm her or put her in harm’s way,” Strawn implored the judge at his May 2016 sentencing inside Idaho’s Fremont County Courthouse. “At the time I thought I was making the right decision, […]

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