Warning: This article contains discussions of child marriage that some readers may find distressing.
People have been left disgusted after learning about the story of a man in his 20s who married a nine-year-old girl... and it was completely legal.
History isn’t always a great thing to look into, and when it comes to the legal age to marry, you might be shocked at what you find.
Unlike now, where many states require a person to be 16 and above, with or without parental permission to wed, it used to blur the lines of morality.
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In one instance, a nine-year-old girl legally married a 22-year-old man in 1937, with birth records revealing that he could have actually been as old as 26 at the time.
Charlie Johns and Eunice Winstead lived a long life together, and it all started when the little girl secretly eloped with the tobacco farmer in Hancock County, Tennessee.
The couple had falsified Winstead’s age so they could marry, but because there was no minimum marriage age in Tennessee to marry, and minors did not need parental permission at the time, they were able to marry legally.
Now, the minimum legal age to marry in Tennessee is 18, with 17-year-olds having to have parental or guardian consent.
Horrifyingly, both families approved of the union, but that doesn’t mean the nation did.
Shortly after the news broke, national magazines and newspapers reported on the age difference, and women all over the US demanded that the law be changed to prevent a child marriage like this from ever happening again.
“We have to continue to look at children as children,” said Jean Evans, a Republican, who in 2016 introduced a bill that would require minors to be at least 17 years old to apply for a marriage license from a court clerk with one parent’s permission.
“We don’t let them buy alcohol or cigarettes or vote or serve their country — I don’t know why we’re allowing them to get married.”
Despite the outrage, Eunice and Charlie went on to welcome nine children - the first being born when Eunice was just 14 - and were married for 60 years before Charlie's death in 1997, according to The Grand Forks Herald.
After hearing the story resurface online, people have had strong opinions on the controversial marriage.
One person said: “It's truly disgusting, it's not even a wedding, it's an open-air prison.”
And another wrote: “As a mother of a little girl, I cannot imagine that a child's innocence and purity would be shattered...These people and those who protect them are diabolical!”
Sadly, there are still cases of children being married in more recent times.
In 2015, newly turned 15-year-old Heather, from Idaho, legally married her 24-year-old boyfriend, Aaron, after becoming pregnant at 14 and having her father sign off on the marriage in Missouri, where girls are able to marry at 15 with the consent of only one parent, the BBC reports.
This is despite the marriage being something Heather did not want.
In a bid to dodge the statutory rape charge, the pair wed until her mom had it annulled, and Aaron was sent to prison.
Britt Jones