Child Marriage: The Hidden Abuse No One Wants to Talk About

In this episode of Gyno Info, I’m talking about child marriage — and why I consider child brides to be victims of childhood sexual abuse.

As an OB‑GYN, I’ve seen firsthand how early pregnancy and forced marriage impact young girls physically, emotionally, and socially. While many countries officially list 18 as the legal age of marriage, there are still loopholes through parental or judicial consent that allow girls — sometimes as young as 13, or with no minimum age — to be married, often after becoming pregnant.

In this episode, I break down:

• How child marriage exposes girls to repeated sexual assault
• The serious health risks of pregnancy in children, including preeclampsia, premature birth, maternal death, and obstetric fistulas
• The increased risk of sexually transmitted infections
• The long‑term mental health, educational, and economic consequences
• Why poverty, sexism, and cultural systems continue to fuel this practice

I also discuss recent global changes to marriage laws, including countries that have removed or lowered minimum age protections.

This is a difficult topic — but it’s one we need to talk about openly if we want real change. My goal with Gyno Info is always the same: to help women understand their bodies, advocate for themselves, and demand better healthcare and legal protections.

If you believe girls deserve protection, education, and autonomy over their bodies, this episode is for you.

You can write to us at Questions@GynoInfo.net

And follow us on Instagram @gynoinfo

Transcript

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Welcome to Gyno Info, Frank Talk with Dr. Burkey, the podcast dedicated to teaching everyday women what they need to know about their body and how it works to successfully deal with the healthcare system and communicate with their doctors. Each week, I'll provide you with new information and practical tips about gynecology and women's health care. I want to prepare you for your doctor's appointments by teaching you what to expect, what information your doctor will need to know from you, and what questions you will need and should ask her so you can be confident and make the most out of every visit. Gyno Info will give you the knowledge you need to take charge of your health and do this in a clear and frank way that you can understand without having a medical degree, one episode at a time. So now let's begin. Hello. Welcome back to GynoInfo, the podcast about women's health in normal everyday language that normal everyday people can understand. No special medical words and no doctors speak. A special welcome to those who just discovered us and are listening for the first time. Please take a moment now to subscribe to GynoInfo. This will help you to get back to this episode in case you have to interrupt it in the middle and would like to finish the podcast later on. This week I'm again going to talk about a very difficult topic, child brides. It's a follow-up on the episode 141 that I did last April about the lifelong trauma of childhood sexual abuse. In many places around the world, girls as young as 13 and younger are still married off by their relatives, often to men several times their age. These poor girls are called child brides, but what this also most definitely really is childhood sexual abuse of the worst kind. This is girl children being sold as sex slaves to older men. It is in actual fact prostitution of minors, which is officially illegal in 100% of countries in the world. It is what sent even that super rich creep, Jeffrey Epstein, to jail. And according to UNESCO, a part of the United Nations, as of 2025, 80% of all countries, eight out of ten countries, have set the age a young woman can legally be married as 18. Anything younger than 18, that is not considered a legal marriage. 18 is generally also the age of majority in most countries. The age when people are considered an adult before the law, when people have the legal right to control over their person, their actions, and their decisions. And it also terminates the right a parent has over them. The age of majority is not always the legal age for everything. In the United States, for instance, you can start driving a car with 16 in some states. On the forum, even with 14 in some states. But you can be sent to war to kill people with age 18 in all states, but only be served alcohol when you turn 21. Also, in many countries, the right of being adult is still an illusion for women. They're culturally considered the property of their fathers until they're handed over to a husband whose property they become after marriage in all practical aspects of their lives. 26% of countries, about one out of four countries, do not allow any exception from that law that the legal age of marriage has to be 18. That is to protect girls younger than 18 from being married off before they have a chance to finish their basic education and have a say about whether they want to get married at all. Despite these laws, one in five girls, but only one in 33 boys in the world is still being married off under the age of 18. This is because in more than half of all the countries, there are ways of getting around that lower age limit to legally get married of 18 years. For example, the parents can allow the marriage, which is of course a way for them to sell their girl children into marriage, to sell them into legal prostitution to men who have the money to pay off the family. Or a judge can allow it, for instance, in the case of a pregnancy, which can have particularly disgusting and devastating consequences. It can lead to the rape of these young girls over and over until they fall pregnant. Once the girls are pregnant, they are then married off. In the eyes of the society in which they live, that may be less bad than being an unwed mother. Horrible as that is. In three-quarters of countries who allow exceptions to the age of 18 limit, the absolute minimum age for marriage is 16. But in some countries it is as low as 13, and a very few countries have no absolute lower limit at all. It is particularly outrageous and disgusting that many of the countries that allow this method of pregnancy for marrying girls under 18 have no absolute minimal age in place for a marriage to happen. This can lead to children under 10 being made pregnant, so they can be bought and married by the creeps who raped them. Almost all of them go on to have major pregnancy complications that permanently damage them and also harm their babies if they even survive. The most common complications in pregnant children under 15 are premature births of babies that are too small and don't weigh enough to be healthy and survive. Another extremely common complication is preeclampsia, a type of life-threatening pregnancy poisoning that causes super high blood pressure, strokes, kidney and liver failure. I talked about pre-aclampsia in an earlier podcast. It is common in super young women having babies, and also in older women who have babies at the margin, at the upper age limit of when you can get pregnant. But many of these pregnant children are dying in childbirth because their young and delicate bodies are not made to have children and give birth yet. Or they end up with fistulas, holes between their bowels or bladder and their vagina. So they constantly leak, urine, or poop and become social outcasts because they stink. They might rather be dead, probably many of them. Then they may get sent home to their parents who sold them in the first place because their husband doesn't want them around. But the little girls are, of course, physically harmed long before they're impregnated, made pregnant. As you can unfortunately well imagine, adult men's penises do not fit into children's vagina without injuring them. The question is, why could anybody do this to these poor girls? And I'm not talking here about the two young people under 20 who are stupid enough or undereducated enough to have unprotected sex, that then become pregnant and then decide that they have to get married, and because one of them is under 18, they need parental permission to do so. That is unfortunate for them, as it will most likely screw up the education, income, and quality of future life for both of them, but almost always more for the young woman than for the man. But it is hardly sexual abuse of children. What I'm talking about in this podcast, I'm talking about pedophiles, older men who are sexually attracted to children, sick men who have the money to buy children to have sex with and to abuse, only to discard them when they get older, if the girls even survive long enough to become old enough for their pedophile owners to no longer be attracted to them. Or then there are still these superstitious and ignorant men in some parts of the world who falsely believe that having sex with pure children will cure their sexually transmitted diseases like AIDS and syphilis. Both these are deadly sexually transmitted diseases that they of course will pass on to the children they buy as wives. This is then not just sexual abuse of the worst kind. It is also murder. Now I have talked about the perpetrators, the sickles who buy and marry children to have sex with. What about the sellers, the parents or the other family members who sell the kids? Sometimes the girls are orphans that are sold by their relatives who want to get rid of them rather than taking care of them after their parents die. But more often than not, the people who sell these young girls into marriage are their parents. And more often than not, the reason that parents see no other option than selling their girl children into sex slavery is nothing more and nothing less than unbearable poverty and starvation conditions caused by the wars, famines, injustice, and the criminal inequality that exists in our world. Of course, plain old sexism and the not valuing girl children the same as boy children are valued also plays a role. The girls are sold, so the rest of the family, especially boys, can survive a little bit longer. And then there are creepy religious customs too. A common trait of many religious sects, especially Protestant ones, is that older males and church leaders marry underage girls, often more than one at a time. Or simply just have sex, often masquerading as religious duties or rituals with young girls who have no say whatsoever in the matter. And most polygamous religions in the world involve the marriage of much older men to underage women as the first wives get older. This leaves us to talk now about the girls, the victim, the so-called child brides. I have already talked about the physical damage to their bodies caused by forcing children to have sex with adult men and to bear children. I also talked about the risk to their physical lives and the lives of their babies. But there is also damage to their future economic life. One of the main reasons that women the world over tend to be poorer than men is that they are less educated than men. In many parts of the world, especially poor women, are still illiterate. They cannot read and they cannot write. And the main reason for that is that they are not able or allowed to go to school. And the most common reason for girls not to be in school and learning, aside from religious fanatics running their country, like in Afghanistan, or war and famine, or both destroying their society, like in Palestine, Sudan, and unfortunately too many other countries. The most common reason is being a child bride, being forced to leave school and your friends to become a man's wife, to become his housekeeper and sex slave. All women should have the right over their own body, which includes the right to decide when, whether, and with whom to have sex, and whether birth control is going to be used or not. This is not the rights granted to them in a forced marriage. All women should have the right to sexual pleasure and happiness in a partnership of equals. How could they possibly have that when these child brides only experience with sex has been pain and being forced into something they barely understand? Even if by some miracle these child brides later manage to escape and end up in a loving partnership, that really takes a miracle. Their emotional scars are so profound often that it will be extremely difficult for them to ever gain sexual satisfaction and happiness. To hear more about the scars of childhood sex abuse, be it as a child bride or just as the other countless girls that are sexually abused in the world, you can listen to my podcast one for one on that sad and sorry topic. This brings us to the end of this also very sad episode. For me, it was again about a very upsetting topic. But I hope it gave you a lot of useful and also necessary information that you can share with as many other people, as many women and men as you can. So we can all make our contribution to fight for the rights of girls and women in this world. Fortunately, many countries with a couple of disgraceful exceptions are making progress in changing their laws in the right direction. But they only do this when women and men demand it and continue to demand it. So our work is far from being done. And just to name and shame two countries that are moving in the absolutely wrong direction. One is Afghanistan that recently removed a lower age limit for girls to be married completely, and Iraq that lowered the legal age for girls to marry from 18, where it was since 1950 to age nine. Can you imagine that? Shame on the men in both these countries, because it sure was not the women who are pushing these kinds of disgraceful laws, nor is it the good men. And there are some. Just last week I saw a young woman from Afghanistan in my office who fled together with her young Afghani husband to Switzerland, where they're now both going to school to catch up on the education that was denied to them in their home country. This kind of story always gives me a little bit of hope in these rather dark times. And please remember that if you have any further questions about the topic I talked about today or any other issue having to do with women's health, please don't hesitate to send them to me at questions at gynoinfo.net. Again, that's questions at gynoinfo.net. And if you like this episode, please give us a lot of likes and share it with your friends, family, and coworkers. Please also make sure that you click the subscribe button wherever you listen to or watch GynoInfo. So you can get back to it easily whenever you want. And the more people subscribe, and it's quite a few now, luckily, the easier it will be for others to find us. Thank you very much. Until next time. Thank you for listening. And remember that you and your health are super important and deserve your full attention. Don't ever put off contacting your doctor because you're scared or embarrassed when something feels wrong about your body. Doctors are here to help you, not to judge you. And also, regular Wellwoman visits are always a good idea that you should make time for. You deserve it, and you owe it to yourself, and you owe it to your body and your health. This podcast is part of Pride House Media, hosted by me, Dr. Burke, produced and edited by Josh Rosenzweig. Original music composed by Nell Balaban. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. And while you're there, leave us a rating and a review. It really helps others discover the show. Stay connected and join the conversation by following me on Instagram and Facebook at GynoInfo and on LinkedIn at gynoinfopodcast.