Nearly 10,000 Kentucky children got married from 2000 to 2015, before a new law dramatically curtailed the practice.

In 2018, state Sen. Julie Raque Adams, R-Louisville, and advocate Donna Simmons worked together to secure the passage of Senate Bill 48. Since then, cases of child marriage have dropped from about 300 per year to about 20 annually, according to Simmons.

Their widely supported law — which passed overwhelmingly in both the House and Senate — requires that when 17-year-olds marry, they can only do so with a partner within a four-year age gap and with a judge’s approval. The law prohibits anyone 16 or younger from marrying in Kentucky under any circumstance.

But there’s still work to be done, they said.

“There are some counties that are in violation of the law,” Simmons said. “There are some counties that are allowing 16-year-olds to marry. They’re not paying attention to the age disparity cap at four years, and we have some instances in which 17-year-olds were married off to a 27-year-old and a 29-year-old.”

As those discoveries have come to light, Adams has begun considering what the next iteration of the law should entail. Because public agencies have not disclosed the counties in which the child marriages continue to occur, she says either the cap should be fully raised to 18 years old, or there must be transparency requirements.

The fact that some elected judges and county clerks have not abided by the law disheartens Adams.

“We take an oath that says that we will execute the laws of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, and that’s clearly not happening in this instance,” Adams said.

During a 15-year window beginning in 2000, there were 9,913 marriages in which at least one spouse was a minor, and of those marriages, 93% — about 9,219 — involved a minor marrying an adult. Ninety-one percent of the adults were men marrying underage girls.

Hundreds of marriages were among teens with a one- or two-year age gap, but there were instances of gaps as high as 45 years.

Data provided by Simmons also shows:

—In 2001, a 62-year-old woman married a 17-year-old boy.

—In 2003, a 33-year-old man married a 13-year-old girl.

—In 2009, a 48-year-old man married a 16-year-old girl.

As the state works to curb the rates, Simmons has flagged the issue to U.S. Rep. Morgan McGarvey, a Democrat representing Louisville, and the two have discussed areas for improvement. McGarvey co-sponsored Adams’ bill when he was in the state Senate.

“Congressman McGarvey believes nothing is more important than protecting our children, including ending child marriage,” his office wrote in a statement to the Herald-Leader.

As the state navigates the pathways it can continue to take, Simmons is grateful she’s been able to turn her own traumatic experience of being a child bride into change.

Simmons was 16 when she married a 31-year-old therapist she’d met while receiving treatment at a hospital the year before. They had a child, but two years later, they divorced. She got her own apartment thanks to her job’s tip jar, but lost custody of her daughter, for whom she had to pay monthly child support despite merely working a part-time, minimum wage job.

It’s been 25 years since then, and she’s recently remarried. But the trauma has never left her, she said.

“I truly believe that the reason I survived everything I did, and have the grace that I do and have the intelligence that I do, was to be able to give that owed gift to others, to show that they are capable of that as well,” she said.

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