Fraidy Reiss

Reiss was raised Haredi Jewish in Brooklyn, New York.[1][2] At age 19, she entered an arranged marriage to a man she had known for three months.[3][4][5] She married the man, and had two children with him.

According to Reiss, in the first week of her marriage, her then-husband began to abuse her, repeatedly threatening to kill her and engaging in other forms of violence.[3][1][6] Reiss says she only realized that she was experiencing domestic violence when she spoke with a therapist outside of her community.[7] Nonetheless, her community encouraged her to stay with her husband.[6] After one violent episode, Reiss applied for a temporary restraining order, the first woman in her community to do so.[3] However, she says her rabbi sent an attorney, also a member of the Haredi community, to take Reiss to family court, to tell the judge that she wished to drop the order. Reiss developed a five-year escape plan,[6] and was eventually able to go to college, get a job, support her family, and divorce her husband.[8]

Reiss graduated at 32 from Rutgers University, and was commencement speaker.[9][10] She began work as a journalist. Reiss left her husband after twelve years of marriage, and was shunned by her family and community after doing so. She finally was able to obtain a divorce three years after leaving him.[11] Reiss subsequently left Judaism, and became an atheist.[3][1] Reiss has not spoken to her family since then, save for her sister on occasion.[3][2][4]

In 2016, it was announced that Reiss would become the subject of a documentary by production company Women Rising.[9] Sara Hirsh Bordo will direct the documentary, and production on it was scheduled to begin in fall of 2016.[9]

In 2011, Reiss founded the non-profit organization Unchained At Last, to support women who wish to leave arranged and forced marriages.[3][1][6][2][8] Helping minors is difficult, but Unchained does what it can, including changing laws to prevent minors from being legally entered into marriage in the United States.[11] The organization is incorporated in New Jersey.[1] Unchained At Last serves people from various communities. The organization tailors services to each client's background.[2] Unchained At Last offers legal assistance and other direct services for the women. The organization also helps the women with social services, so that they can continue with their lives, as well as mentoring.[3][1][6][7] Reiss has also participated in a planning session held by the White House Council on Women and Girls that would target development of a national policy on forced and arranged marriages.[1] Reiss also collaborated with New Jersey senator Loretta Weinberg on a draft of a law that would allow women to access crime victimization records free of charge. This would allow the women to use those records as proof to obtain restraining orders.[4] As of 2023, the organization has assisted over 930 survivors.[12]

Upon learning about the widespread phenomenon of marriage under the age of 18 in the United States, Reiss took on ending marriage under the age of 18 in all 50 U.S. states. In 2018, the first two U.S. states - Delaware and New Jersey - signed laws ending all marriage before 18, due to Unchained At Last's activism and assistance.[13][14] Also in 2018, American Samoa, a U.S. territory, ended child marriage.[15] Pennsylvania, Minnesota and the U.S. Virgin Islands followed in 2020, then Rhode Island and New York in 2021 and Massachusetts in 2022. In 2023, Vermont, Connecticut and Michigan ended child marriage, meaning 10 states -- 20% of the U.S. -- has now ended child marriage.[16] As of 2023, several other states have introduced similar legislation to end marriage under the age of 18.[17]

Reiss has written several op-eds for outlets like The Washington Post, The Star-Ledger, CNN, The Hill, and Refinery29 (co-authored by Chelsea Clinton).[18][19][20][21][22][23][24] Reiss has also been interviewed about her personal story and her activism by several major news outlets, including The New York Times, NPR, Al Jazeera America, PBS Newshour, BBC, CBS News, NowThis, and more.[25] In 2017, Forbes named Reiss one of five women who are tackling some of the world's "most urgent issues".[26] Reiss was featured in Great Big Story's "Defenders" series about fearless, headstrong, undeterred women fighting for change in the spirit of Ruth Bader Ginsburg,[27] and was one of the titular "gutsy women" featured in Hillary and Chelsea Clinton's 2019 book, The Book of Gutsy Women and subsequent Apple TV+ docuseries, Gutsy.[28]

Reiss lent her expertise to the A&E documentary, I Was a Child Bride: The Untold Story, with Elizabeth Vargas, in 2019.[29] In 2018, Reiss gave a TED talk at TEDxFoggyBottom titled, "America's forced marriage problem".[30]

• Child marriage in the United States

• Why Fraidy Reiss founded Unchained At Last - a Washington Post interview with Fraidy Reiss
• How a bride forced to marry became ‘unchained at last’ - Al Jazeera America
• Woman Breaks Through Chains of Forced Marriage, and Helps Others Do the Same - The New York Times
• Why can 12-year-olds still get married in the United States? - a Washington Post op-ed by Fraidy Reiss
• An American 13-Year-Old, Pregnant and Married to Her Rapist - a New York Times op-ed by Nicholas Kristof
• Unchained at Last Aims to End Child and Forced Marriages - a NJ Monthly profile