While scanning through news stories this afternoon, I came across this story. An 11-year-old girl in Bulgaria gave birth to a baby girl over the weekend, in the middle of her three-day wedding ceremony.
The girl met her 19-year-old husband a few weeks before her 11th birthday, when she was being bullied by a group of kids on the playground. He intervened, rescued her from the bullies, and later, she asked him out on a date, and a week later she was pregnant.
Now the girl says she will "stop playing with toys--I have a new toy now," and "I have to grow up, she is the child now--I will not go back to school.
While the father, who is facing up to 6 years in prison for having sex with a minor, says, “We know that having a baby is a big responsibility. My wife is young but I will make sure that I look after both of them if the law allows me.”
There are so many issues wrapped up in this story--the fact that 11-year-olds should not be having sex is probably the biggest, but also 11-year-old girls should not be pursuing relationships with 19-year-olds, and parents should be responsible for teaching their children morality/responsibility and acceptable behavior. While the culture is definitely a factor in this story, it cannot be "blamed" for what's happened. The grandmother with whom the child is living (her parents are in Spain) says that it is tradition for their girls to have children and marry young, but admits that her granddaughter is too young. The average marriage age in their particular area is 14. One of the most horrifying thing in the story is that the girl claims that she did not even know how to become pregnant. I find this difficult to believe, but if it is true, then it most definitely should not be. If a girl is capable of getting pregnant, she should know how reproduction works.
As far as the father goes, while it seems to me that simply not having sex with people you meet on school playgrounds would be a safe and reasonable approach, barring that, 19-year-olds must be responsible for verifying the age of their partners. This girl does not look 11, she looks closer to 16, which is above the age of consent in that country, but the way she looks does not change her actual age. All of that being said, this whole situation would be avoided if people could control themselves enough to marry before having sex.
All of this being said, the reason I really felt like responding to this story was that the comments on some of the articles were as horrific as the articles themselves. One person marked the darkness of the child's skin, then went on to talk about more and less evolved races, comparing "less evolved races" to weeds which breed more quickly than cultivated, "more evolved plants." I felt like I was reading something out of Nazi Germany. Before today, I really was under the impression that fascism was a thing of the past, and yet there it was staring me in the face. This was not the only comment of its kind, but most of the others were less obvious about their racism. Most targeted gypsies and culture instead of skin color. Another commenter cried out against Americans who saw this as a case of statutory rape and a terrible tragedy when, as (s)he said that the same case happening in the US with a black girl would be seen as her trying to live off the government.
I don't believe any of those arguments have any grounds in this story. These commenters are coming to the story with preconceived notions about the world and the way it works and the injustices of it all and the things that people are doing wrong, and then they are using the story to voice their thoughts about completely different issues. Until people are able to come to a case without their own agendas, comment boards will be a place where extremists voice opinions that make Americans look like self-righteous fascists, and that horrifies me.
Last off, I would like to say that I don't believe the couple in this story is cursed or destined to have a miserable life. The father in question seems sincerely, if naively, determined to improve the condition of his very young family. Both parties are professedly in love. Both express love for their new child, and the father has high hopes for her future: “I want Violeta to be educated, to be able to read and write. She was born famous and maybe she will stay famous like becoming a doctor who invents brilliant medicine or saves lives." I sincerely hope that this family can retain that determination, that they will educate their daughter in ways that they should have been educated themselves, and that she does someday become a brilliant physician...or whatever else she may want to be.
Article from NY Daily News
Video and Wedding Pics on YouTube
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