Ajlin Oliva
BBC Mundo
Patricia Lane grew up in Eden Prairie, a small town with green hills and river views on the edge of Minnesota, in the United States.
For many, it is an idyllic place.
For her, it represents a childhood cut off from the world.
"My brother and I were very socially isolated."
"Even though we lived in the suburbs of a big American city, I lived by strict rules, they oppressed me," Lane recalls.
A victim of sexual abuse from a very early age, Lane fell into a deep depression that led her, at the age of 12, to seek help through a crisis hotline.
That's how she met Tim - a man who one day answered her call and who, months later, would become her husband.
Tim was 25 years old and studying seminary.
As part of his religious training to become a missionary, he was assigned to a small organization to answer telephone calls.
The two soon agreed to meet and, after a short period, Lane became pregnant and engaged.
She was only 14 years old.
Lane grew up in an evangelical family.
"I discovered that prayer didn't work as contraception. I was pregnant and I didn't want to marry him," Lane recalls.
While Tim cried in the basement, Lane told her parents that she was pregnant.
Her mother's reaction was not what she had hoped for - she accused her of "dishonoring the family."
“My mother was very unequivocal: I am solely to blame for all the shame I have brought on the family and the only way to make it right is to marry this man and be a good wife to him,” says Lane.
If she wanted to keep the baby, she had to get married.
Her father signed a consent form, and the next day, Lane, her mother, and Tim headed south to find a state court that would allow someone Lane's age to marry, which was otherwise forbidden in Minnesota.
"I felt I had no other option.
I didn't want to marry him, but I desperately wanted to keep the baby and raise it.
"I knew I could be a good mother."
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Pregnancy as a loophole in the law
Lane, her mother, and Tim first arrived in Kentucky, the closest state to Minnesota that allowed marriage at her age.
But local officials rejected their request.
"Absolutely not. They're too young," Lane recalls being told.
"And they were right. Absolutely right. I was too young."
They continued on to Alabama, where at that time she could marry with parental consent.
In Lauderdale County, within minutes, Lane and Tim were married.
She didn't wear a white dress or decorate her hair with flowers for the wedding.
Her mother was the only witness.
"It all happened incredibly fast. I didn't want to be there."
"I didn't like the man, and my mother was furious," Lane, now 58, tells the BBC.
"It was creepy."
Minutes after receiving her marriage license, she went to the park across from the courthouse and sat on a swing - a childish impulse that angered both her mother and her new husband.
"None of it was how I imagined the wedding," Lane recalls.
At the time, she was in the early weeks of her first pregnancy and later gave birth to a child who was given up for adoption.
"I didn't sign my own marriage certificate."
"My name is on it, but I wasn't asked to sign it. My mother signed it for me."
"She put my life in the hands of a man. That's how these marriages work."
"Other people just hand you over and you can't escape until you're 18," she says.
In the 46 years since Lane married Tim, Alabama laws have changed very little.
Today, 14-year-old girls cannot get married, but a 16-year-old can with the consent of one parent, despite 18 being the minimum age for marriage.
"There is no other additional protection."
"The state does not require minors to give independent consent, nor is court approval required," explains lawyer Anastasia Lo.
Only 16 US states, including the capital, Washington, have set 18 as the minimum legal age for marriage in 2025, with no exceptions.
This is the standard demanded by human rights groups.
Legal exceptions in other states include pregnancy by the intended spouse, that person's child has already been born, and parental consent.
States where pregnancy has been successfully presented as a reason for exempting the minimum age for marriage include Arkansas, New Mexico, and Oklahoma.
Anastasia Lo from the gender rights organization Equality Now (Equality Now) argues that the exceptions do nothing but “further legitimize relationships and acts of exploitation that would otherwise be considered statutory rape or child abuse.”
According to the United Nations, in 2025, about 12 million girls worldwide were still married before the age of 18, the age threshold that defines child marriage.
Many organizations warn that efforts must be drastically stepped up to eliminate this practice by 2030, in line with the Sustainable Development Goals.
This practice is internationally recognized as a violation of human rights.
In the US alone, where there is no federally mandated minimum age for marriage, more than 300.000 minors were legally married between 2000 and 2021, according to the organization's documentation. Finally without shackles, which is working to end this practice in the country.
Some of them were married at just 10 years old, although most were married at 16 or 17.
Most of the girls were married to adult men.
“The federal law would fill legal loopholes that currently allow and encourage child marriage and child trafficking under the guise of marriage,” says Lo.
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'I'm still struggling with isolation'
In the years following her marriage, Lane was faced with extremely difficult decisions, including giving up her daughter for adoption and divorcing her husband.
She later remarried - this time of her own free will.
According to organizations working to combat forced and child marriage in the US, affected girls often became isolated and prone to dropping out of school, making them even more dependent on their husbands.
"I lost a few years of education. I caught up later, but it's not the same," says Lane.
"My husband wouldn't let me have any friends. I was completely alone."
"To this day, I struggle with isolation to this day."
“I'm more comfortable being alone than in a group because I still have a hard time trusting people,” she says.
Since 2018, 16 countries have changed their laws to ban child marriage, thanks to ongoing campaigns by survivors and civil society.
But much more remains to be done.
"People think it only happens in developing countries or in certain religions. But no, it happens in the United States too," Lane says.
Activists say the lack of awareness that child marriage is a problem in the US, combined with deep-rooted gender biases, makes legal reform all the more difficult.
"For these men, marriage is a way to avoid prosecution. I'm asking lawmakers not to allow that," Lane says.
"And for those who claim that at 16 or 17 years old it's already true love - great."
"If it's true love, it will still be true love when they're 18."
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