Child Marriage in America
The FRONTLINE Dispatch
GBH
4.5 ā¢ 1.1K Ratings
šļø 14 September 2017
ā±ļø 53 minutes
šļø Recording | iTunes | RSS
š§¾ļø Download transcript
Summary
In the summer after 9th grade, 14-year-old Heather discovered she was pregnant. Her boyfriend Aaron was 24. At the time, marriage seemed like it could be a solution to their problems ā and maybe a way to keep Aaron out of jail.
In this episode of the FRONTLINE Dispatch, reporter Anjali Tsui and producer Sophie McKibben go inside a battle playing out over child marriage in America.
Anjali Tsui is an Abrams Journalism Fellow through the FRONTLINE/Columbia Journalism School Fellowships.
For more on child marriage in America ā visitĀ pbs.org/frontlinedispatch.
Editorās Note: After publication of this episode, the TennesseeĀ Department of Health alerted us to an error in the marriage data they provided to FRONTLINE. According to the department, children as young as 10, 11 and 12 were not given marriageĀ licenses in their state.Ā
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm Rainey Aronson, executive producer of the PBS investigative series Front Line. |
| 0:10.0 | This is the Frontline Dispatch. |
| 0:13.0 | Today, an investigation into child marriage in America. |
| 0:17.0 | The Frontline Dispatch is made possible by the Abrams Foundation Journalism Initiative, |
| 0:22.0 | Committed to Excellence. Abrams Foundation Journalism Initiative, |
| 0:22.6 | Commited to Excellence. |
| 0:25.0 | At frontline, we're known for our documentary films. |
| 0:30.9 | But so often over the years, our producers have come across stories that they can't capture on camera. |
| 0:36.9 | Stories better told in sound. This is one of them. |
| 0:42.0 | I thought it was going to be a dream come true. |
| 0:45.0 | Married with a great husband, soon to have a kid, |
| 0:49.0 | great life, working, you know, and it seemed wonderful when I thought about it for the time being. |
| 0:59.0 | But then I thought to myself and I'm like, what am I doing? |
| 1:05.0 | 14. |
| 1:07.0 | More than 200,000 miners were legally married in the US between 2000 and 2015. |
| 1:16.0 | It's a complicated and divisive issue and it's coming up in state houses across the country. |
| 1:23.4 | With some people arguing that minors should be allowed to marry |
| 1:26.8 | under certain circumstances and others calling for a total ban on marriage |
| 1:32.4 | before the age of 18. |
| 1:34.4 | End child marriage now. |
| 1:36.9 | Ask us and we'll tell you how. |
| 1:39.4 | Our reporter, Angeli Choi, has spent the last year tracking down marriage data and speaking |
... |
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