Fraidy Reiss was only a teenager when her family forced her to marry a stranger in New York City’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish community. Her husband was violent and she was forced to have unprotected sex, resulting in two children. In her insular religious community, only a man could grant a divorce.
Reiss escaped and, in defiance of her husband and family, who declared her dead, she went to college, managed to get a divorce, won full custody of her two daughters and founded Unchained At Last, a nonprofit dedicated to ending forced and child marriage.
Nearly 315,000 minors — the vast majority of them girls — were legally married in the United States between 2000 and 2021. During that time period, child marriage was legal in all 50 states.
“For some reason, most Americans do not realize that these abuses are happening,” Reiss said. “Most Americans agree that forced marriage and child marriage are terrible and heartbreaking. They imagine this happening on the other side of the world, and I wish there was something we could do to show them it’s happening here, too, largely because we have outdated, archaic and dangerous laws that need to be updated.”
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Reiss led a national movement: She helped draft legislation to introduce state bans; staged “chain-ins,” demonstrations outside statehouses involving wedding dress-clad protesters with arms chained and mouths taped; and helped more than 1,300 survivors escape forced marriages across the country.
As of 2026, more than a decade after Reiss began her advocacy efforts, 17 states, two territories and Washington, D.C., have passed child marriage bans.
This profile is apart of The 19th’s Revolutionary series. Subscribe to The Amendment, our biweekly newsletter, to receive project updates and political analysis focused on gender, race and power.
our past coverage of Fraidy Reiss
· July 25, 2025
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