ScarletSuccubusCosplay

When Sherry Johnson was eleven, she found one day that she’s gonna marry a 20-year-old member of her church who had raped her. She became pregnant and in order to avoid investigation and criminal case, her family and church officials decided to make the girl a legal wife of this monster.

“My mom asked me if I wanted to get married, and I said, ‘I don’t know, what is marriage, how do I act like a wife?’” Johnson remembers today, many years later. “She said, ‘Well, I guess you’re just going to get married.’” 

However, her case is one of thousand cases of child marriage. According to statistics, children 16 and under are still being married in Florida at a rate of one every few days.

Johnson and her family also attended a conservative Pentecostal church and that other girls of a similar age periodically also married. One girl said when she was 10 she was raped by both a minister and a parishioner and later gave birth to a daughter. There were all documents confirming her and her child’s age, but still, the judge approved the marriage to end the rape investigation, telling her, “What we want is for you to get married.”

And nevertheless, America prefers to interfere in other countries’ internal affairs, like in Syria, calling it “defending freedom” rather than to change states’ laws and to protect American children from rape, coercion and molestation. 

Today, Johnson is campaigning for a state law to stop underage marriage that has already become a norm in some states.

Please, help me to raise awareness to this issue. No one can remain indifferent to the problem of child molestation. 

“Anger gets shit done,” Anansi reminded you. And you were right - you were angry.

You were angry at injustice. You were angry at police brutality. You were angry at the president. You were angry at the people who defended racism like it was an opinion rather than a hate crime.

So you took up your sign and you marched. You blended in with the hundreds, thousands of other people in your city doing the same, with Anansi marching right beside you, reminding you that this was how change happened. You might not be able to change everyone’s mind, there was always going to be at least one voice against yours, but goddamn it, you could be louder than them. You could make sure that your message was heard. You could make sure that your anger was placed into productivity. You could shout on behalf of the many people who were not here anymore because of prejudice.

And most of all, you would walk down those streets because your tax dollars paid for those streets, for these corrupt police officers, and you would show them that you were not going to be done being angry until change was made. You were not going to give up, or let yourself be silenced.

Prodigal Son s01e07