Dawn Tyree never really had a childhood. You see, the now 51-year-old mother of two was married to a man 19 years her senior the summer after she finished sixth grade. You read that right, the SIXTH grade. She was already pregnant by the man, and at just 13 years old she became both wife and mother.
Today, she is incensed that this kind of thing is legal in our country. Tyree says her parents encouraged her to start spending time with the 30-year-old man when she was just eleven years old, and that he groomed her and made her his sex abuse victim.
Their marriage, she says, was the “solution” to his abuse and her parents’ allowance of it.
“Marriage covers up the rape, the sex abuse and the child endangerment,” she told TODAY.com. “The marriage saved him from a prison sentence,” she adds, “and essentially put me in a prison.”
At just 14, she gave birth again. Tyree says she now knows that having kids so young put her own life in danger. Children who give birth are much more likely to suffer complications like eclampsia, puerperal endometritis and other infections, according to the World Health Organization.
At 16, afraid her husband would sexually abuse her own children, Tyree escaped her abusive marriage, “without a plan,” she says. Domestic violence shelters wouldn’t take the family because she was a minor, so for a time the young mother had to give custody of her children to their paternal grandparents until she could get housing.
The refusal of married minors by shelters is just another obstacle faced by child brides trying to escape abusive marriages. Another obstacle? The courts. As a minor, Dawn had to wait until she was 18 to finalize her divorce and get custody of her children.
“The courts, even in these grotesque marriages, these egregious acts toward children, favor the adult,” she explains. “My first real job was assembling bicycles at Toys R Us. That is how I paid rent for our one bedroom in a little house.”
With her children long grown, Tyree now fights for other children out there: ones who, like herself, might fall victim to child marriage. In the United States, the legal marital age is left up to the states, and marriage for minors is still legal in 43 of 50 states. Tyree has committed her life to ending the legality of child marriage in this and every country, but her fight is focused here where she lives.
“It’s no longer about me,” she says. “I can remove all of my trauma and show up for the other 13-year-old brides. I’m speaking for those who are silenced — for those who don’t have a voice.”
Tyree knows there are victims of childhood marriage out there who are, as she was, trying to figure out how to escape the living nightmare, and she has a message for them: “There are people out here aware of these circumstances that feel so lonely and isolating,” she says. “We’re fighting for you. Hang in there. Hang on.”
