According to the CDC, Child abuse and neglect are serious public health problems and adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) can have long-term impact on health, opportunity, and wellbeing. This issue includes all types of abuse and neglect against a child under the age of 18 by a parent, caregiver, or another person in a custodial role (such as a religious leader, a coach, a teacher) that results in harm, the potential for harm, or threat of harm to a child.

Child marriage is not included as an adverse childhood experience on CDC and NIH websites, not referenced in the H.R.1620 - Violence Against Women Act Reauthorization Act of 2021, and currently 44 states in the United States still allow child marriage to occur.

The culmination of this means victims of child marriage are not receiving the federal protections they deserve in their workplaces.

Additional advocacy and workplace HR policies are needed to protect child marriage survivors and domestic violence victims who are in similar situations like mine where bullying and abusive behaviors exist in the workplace. Many child marriage survivors grow up to experience bullying and abuse as adults in the workplace, which are magnified for those who live through the maltreatment our abusers throw at us in our professional lives. 

Child marriage survivors are constantly revictimized over and over again, and there is no law protecting them from the onset. 

The US government t is ignoring a massive epidemic in its midst and failing children in this country, whose futures are being constantly retraumatized because of lack of laws and protections.

There is a massive disconnect in U.S. laws and policies protecting child marriage survivors -- again, the reason being that U.S. laws are archaic in believing a child whose brain is not fully matured, is emotionally mature enough to get married and run a household and have babies. 

I urge U.S. Congress to add Child Marriage Survivorship as a protected category, into the public and private sector, and into Human Resources policies, to help child marriage survivors finally get the dignity and respect they deserve as adults.