A woman who was forced to marry her rapist when she was 11 has helped inspire the Florida Senate pass a bill that would end child marriage in the state.
Sherry Johnson, 58, sat in the public gallery Wednesday as several senators thanked her for pushing for the bill that would prohibit anyone under 18 from getting married under any circumstance.
Johnson was raped at age 8 by a church bishop in Tampa, the Miami Herald reports. Later, her mother’s husband and a church deacon, Alfonsa Tolbert, did the same.
Sherry Johnson, 58, was forced to marry her rapist, church deacon Alfonsa Tolbert, when she was 11. They are pictured together getting married. He was 20 years old
Johnson helped inspire the Florida Senate to pass a bill that would end child marriage in the state. She sat in the public gallery Wednesday as several senators thanked her for pushing for the bill that would prohibit anyone under 18 from getting married under any circumstance
Speaking to the Miami Herald, she described how her mother at first did not believe her and insisted she was lying.
But when she became pregnant by Tolbert and needed to leave elementary school to give birth, her mother could no longer deny what had happened.
After she gave birth, her mother – pressured by the church – took her to a courthouse to marry Tolbert. She was 11. He was 20. A judge in Pinellas County eventually approved their union after a judge elsewhere refused to do so.
Johnson hadn’t even finished the fifth grade.
‘Everybody failed me. Nobody protected me,’ she told the Miami Herald.
The marriage was legal.
Pictured is the marriage license that Sherry Johnson and Alfonsa Tolbert received in Pinellas County
If a pregnancy is involved, there is no minimum age for marriage as long as a judge approves the marriage license, Florida law dictates.
Her marriage to Tolbert lasted for six years and she ended up with six children by the age of 17. She then filed for divorce.
Beginning in 2012, she started to lobby Florida’s government to abolish child marriage.
And now, in 2018, the bill to ban marriage for anyone less than 18 years of age passed the state’s Senate unanimously. It did so this past Wednesday.
A Democrat representative described Johnson as ‘the reason for the bill’.
But the following day, an amendment was added by the House to allow minors aged 16 and older who are expecting a child to marry.
Now both bills – the one with no exceptions and the one with an exception – will be debated in Florida’s House.
Johnson says she will continue to fight for the bill with no exceptions in the event that the other is passed.
For now, Florida doesn’t allow anyone under the age of 18 to independently consent to marriage.
Children aged 16 and 17 can marry with the consent of both children’s parents.
There have been more than 16,000 child marriages in Florida since 2001, according to group Unchained at Last.