11th Annual Day of Film

For its 11th annual Day of Film highlighting women’s challenges and successes, the Zonta Club of Denver is pleased, courtesy of A&E, to show “I Was A Child Bride: The Untold Story.” No, it is not about forced marriages in developing countries. This is the story of survivors of childhood marriages in America who are coming forward to call attention to this hidden abuse.

Over the past 15 years, over 200,000 child bride marriages have taken place in the U.S., due to outdated laws, legal misconceptions, and loopholes. The U.S. State Department has called marriage before 18 a “human rights abuse” that “produces devastating repercussions for a girl’s life, effectively ending her childhood.”

This practice leaves these children at risk for domestic violence, dangerous pregnancies, poor mental health, poverty and malnutrition. These pre-maturely married girls are deprived of their fundamental rights to health, education and safety.

– Girls in the U.S. who marry before 19 are 50 percent more likely to drop out of high school than are their unmarried counterparts and four times less likely to complete college.
– Young women in the U.S. who married in their teens are often unable to access education and work opportunities, in part because they tend to have more children, earlier and more closely spaced.
– Girls in the U.S. who marry early are more likely to earn low wages and 31 percent more likely to live in poverty.

Please join us at Zonta Club of Denver’s 11th Annual Day of Film, Saturday, March 28, 2020. Tickets at www.zonta-denver.org include the screening, validated parking and a champagne brunch.