This is a really old-fashioned, religious practice which is steeped in control and patriarchy. It assumes that women’s only purpose in the world is to bear children and keep a home. In so many religious sects and communities, women are not seen as autonomous beings, or even human beings worthy of dignity, respect, and agency. So as girls and women are essentially regarded as the property of their fathers and then their husbands, the men in their lives can do with them what they please—even if it means marrying them off to men that they don’t like or love, or even those who have sexually assaulted them.

Keith Strawn of Idaho, was brought up on charges in 2016 after taking his pregnant 15-year-old daughter to Missouri to marry her 24-year-old boyfriend—the very same boyfriend who got her drunk before having sex with her when she was 14. Because his daughter, Heather, said that she cared for her boyfriend and didn’t want anything to happen to him, Strawn thought marriage was a good alternative. He did not communicate this with Heather’s mother, his ex-wife, who was living in Utah at the time.

Because she clearly has common sense, Heather’s mom was dead set against the marriage and became enraged when she found out what her ex-husband had done. As the Star reports, she called the police and they arrested both Heather’s father and husband.

On the day of Heather’s 15th birthday, when she was nine weeks pregnant, they drove through the night, 17 hours and more than 1,100 miles, to Kansas City to marry her off. That way, the baby would be born within wedlock. And the police, Strawn thought, would be kept at bay. [...] “I love my daughter very much and never would I do anything to intentionally harm her or put her in harm’s way,” Strawn implored the judge at his May 2016 sentencing inside Idaho’s Fremont County Courthouse. “At the time I thought I was making the right decision, but after looking back I realize that that was the wrong decision, and I regretfully made that decision in duress.”

While Heather’s husband received a 15-year prison sentence and is now regarded as a sex offender, Strawn received a suspended sentence. He originally received four years for felony injury to a child, but it was suspended because Heather was supposedly willing to get married. He served a total of 120 days. District Court Judge Gregory W. Moeller was quoted as having said this at the sentencing hearing:

“Your daughter needed a parent. Instead she had an enabler,” Moeller intoned. “You were supposed to be the one with the better judgment and you completely failed in that regard.” [...] “Perhaps as you spend each of those 120 days in jail,” Moeller said, “you will think about the 120 days your daughter was married to a rapist because of you.”

Its easy to say that while this is horrifying and should be criminal, it’s not rampant. But what’s frightening is that we actually don’t know how common these cases are or how many have occurred against a young girl’s will or against the will of one of her parents. In order for child marriage to be investigated and properly prosecuted, someone has to alert the police. It seems very possible that this is happening way more than we think and that families are forcing young girls to go along with these marriages, and no one says anything because it seems commonplace and justifiable. Except it shouldn’t be.

Teenage girls should be allowed to enjoy their adolescence and make their own decisions. And when an unplanned pregnancy occurs, they should be supported and counseled accordingly—not forced into marriages with men they aren’t sure they want to be with, especially not with men who are way older and should not have been sleeping with young girls in the first place. To marry these girls off to their abusers is rape culture and patriarchy in action. In 2018, we should be encouraging young women to dream about their futures and fostering their potential as individuals, not just wives and mothers. Anything less is not only antiquated, as we can see in Missouri. It’s also downright criminal.