Georgia Woman Legally Marries 15-Year Old Father of Her Child

Last week in Gainesville, Georgia, police arrested Lisa Lynnette Clark, 37, and charged her with child molestation for allegedly having a sexual relationship with one of her teenage son’s friends who is 15 years old. But just a few days earlier, Clark married the boy, and the marriage is a legal one. Most states require that parental consent for minors to marry, and if the minor is 16 or under, many states also require court approval. But a few states, including Georgia, allow minors to marry without parental consent in the event of pregnancy or the birth of a child, although the couple may have to get court permission to do so.

One mother of a Georgia teen has been trying to get the attention of lawmakers in Georgia for over a year. Sharon Cline, of Weston, Florida, has sent lawmakers a steady stream of letters begging them to change the law. Her 13-year old niece married a 14-year old boy in Georgia last year without parental consent, and she believes it’s time for the law to change, especially because many of them didn’t even know the law existed. "Some of the lawmakers just didn't believe this could happen," said Cline. "It was very frustrating." But with last week’s arrest of Clark and the news about her marriage, Georgia lawmakers will soon be debating making a change to the law.

The law dates back to at least the early 1960s, and was originally designed ostensibly to prevent children being born out of wedlock. "I never knew it was in the code until this morning," Jerry Keen, the state's House Majority Leader, said Tuesday. "Our legislative counsel, the lawyers who draft the laws, even had to look it up." However, despite the shock and outrage caused by Clark’s case, Keen and others in the Republican-controlled Georgia Legislature aren’t completely keen on making a change to the state's marital requirements. Surprisingly, Keen told reporters, "It's very difficult to govern by exception. You have to govern by rule."

Keen and Senate Majority Leader Tommie Williams said that lawmakers will instead focus on enacting stricter penalties for child molesters, requiring convicts to spend at least 25 years in prison and wear an electronic tracking device within the state’s borders after their release. And as is usually the case in politics, rather than focusing on making a better law for the citizens of Georgia, Democratic lawmakers are hoping that the proposal to change the marriage standards will erupt into a vitriolic debate that will cause a rift in the GOP majority.

Meanwhile, Clark has a court-appointed attorney who plans to take advantage of his client’s marriage in pleading her case. Daniel Sammons says he can use the marriage as a shield to prevent the boy from testifying against his wife. Sammons says his defense will also take advantage of a 2004 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that restricted prosecutors from using the taped statement of a wife to undermine her husband’s defense at a trial. That ruling will make it difficult for prosecutors to make use of an incriminating statement that Clark’s boy groom gave to detectives before his new wife’s arrest.