Sara Tasneem was forced into a religious marriage at age 15 in Los Angeles, spirited out of the country, impregnated and brought back to the United States a few months later for a legally binding marriage.

You read that right. Children can marry in California — and often it’s not their decision.

In fact, California has no minimum age requirement for getting married. In most states, it’s 18.

In the Golden State, you just need a court order and parental consent — a big problem if it’s the parent that’s forcing the marriage.

Yet even the U.S. Department of State declares, “We view forced marriage as a human rights abuse and, in the case of minors, a form of child abuse.”

Most would call what happened to Tasneem — at best — kidnapping and statutory rape, including Tasneem herself. But under the eyes of the law, as Tasneem puts it, she was made a wife at age 16 while about to bear her first child.

From California to New York, experts agree children — girls in particular — are forced into marriage in the United States far more than most people realize.

Tahirih Justice Center is a nonprofit focused on protecting women and girls from human rights abuses. Over a recent two-year period, the center documented 3,000 suspected or confirmed cases of children forced into marriage in the U.S.

Today, Tasneem is a 36-year-old professional with a 17-year-old son and a daughter 16 years her junior.

Yet more than a decade after fleeing and divorcing her husband, Tasneem still has nightmares about the man nearly twice her age whom she was forced to live with, care for, sleep with.

“I wake up in panic,” she admits, “thinking I’m back.”

‘A SYSTEM RIFE WITH RAPE’

In the last five years in Orange County, according to the Clerk-Recorder Department, three marriage licenses were taken out involving minors.

But because minors are sometimes hustled off to other states or countries in the little-known and murky world of child marriage, the number of local children could be higher. How many children choose these futures also is unknown.

“My dad sat me down and told me I was getting married,” says Tasneem, who asks that the media only reveal her first and middle names to deter further problems. “I felt like I couldn’t say no to my dad. He was an abusive person.”

Unchained At Last, a nonprofit dedicated to banning child marriages, reports that between 2000 and 2010, some 167,000 minors were married in 38 states.

That figure doesn’t include California — because, well, the state doesn’t keep such records.

In California, you have to be 21 years old to drink, 18 to vote, 16 to get a driver’s license, 14 to work. But when it comes to making the biggest decision of your life?

Heck, technically you could be in grade school.

Perhaps it’s not surprising that California’s marriage rate for minors exceeds the national average. Pew Research Center reports the national rate is 4.6 for every 1,000 15- to 17-year-olds; California’s is 5.5.

Current legal safeguards are close to worthless. If you’re a minor, you need a court order and parental consent. But if you’re like most minors, in reality you are under the rule of at least one parent.

“As a minor, your don’t have the same power as an adult,” says Tasneem, who is now studying business at Golden Gate University in San Francisco. “You can be coerced and forced.”

As a high school freshman, Tasneem planned to continue her education, dreamed of becoming an attorney. Instead, she was introduced to a stranger and whisked away into servitude.

“I lived a sheltered existence,” Tasneem explains. “The way we were raised, girls were considered a burden, something that needed to be passed on to a husband.”

Her parents were divorced and her mother lived in Colorado. Tasneem is sure that if her mother knew what was happening, she would have called police.

Fraidy Reiss, the founder and executive director of Unchained at Last, points out “one person’s parental consent can be another’s parental coercion.”

Reiss allows she was a victim herself, forced by her own parents into an abusive marriage at age 19.

“State laws typically do not call for anyone to investigate whether a child is marrying willingly,” she wrote in an op-ed article. “Even in the case of a girl sobbing openly while her parents sign the application and force her into marriage, the clerk usually has no authority to intervene.”

Children can’t run away because, ironically, police will take them home, Reiss says. They can’t hire an attorney and they can’t go to a shelter.

A girl forced to marry can’t get an education, often is a victim of violence and,” Reiss says, “suffers the consequences for the rest of her life.”

Watchdog groups report coercion is on the rise and say forced marriages involve girls as young as 12 matched with much older men.

“By force, fraud, or coercion,” Tahirih Justice Center states, girls are “being compelled to marry men from their families’ countries or regions of origin, and if the young woman (is) a US citizen — she might then be forced to sponsor a fiancé to enable the groom to come to the United States.”

Emotional blackmail is the most common technique parents use to force children into marriage, Tahirih reports; parents threaten self-harm or say that the family’s reputation is at stake. The second most common approach is isolating children from friends, even preventing them from attending school.

While culture is part of the issue, experts report that extreme religious beliefs also contribute to the problem and touch Jewish, Muslim, Hindu and Christian communities.

Marci Hamilton is an author, professor and CEO of Child USA, a nonprofit dedicated to ending child abuse. She advocates minimum ages for marriage and says states that allow minors to marry create a system rife with rape.

“This is a vestige of the time when women were the property of their husbands,” Hamilton tells me, “a time when it was believed the highest thing a woman could achieve was becoming a bride and a mother.”

But this is the 21st century and California needs to move out of its 1800s child marriage mentality.

PROPOSED BILL ATTACKED

State Sen. Jerry Hill, D-San Mateo, introduced Senate Bill 273 several months ago proposing that California declare 18 as the minimum marriage age. Since 18 coincides with legal adulthood, it made sense.

But some disagreed, such as the ACLU.

In a long and mostly intelligent letter, the ACLU argued the goal of protecting children is noble but having a minimum age requirement is wrong. “Such a ban unnecessarily and unduly intrudes on the fundamental right of marriage without sufficient cause.”

The ACLU added, “We do not believe there is yet good evidence regarding the nature, location or severity of this problem in California.”

Instead of a minimum age — a slippery slope when it comes to rights and I get that — the ACLU suggested stipulating that courts interview the children involved.

I wonder how the rides home with dads will work out.

Currently, Hill’s bill has no minimum age and includes private interviews with minors. At least the bill, Hill says, “sets things in motion.”

But Reiss says the bill is worthless in its amended state. She recommends starting over with a minimum marriage age of 18. “The solution is to stop child marriage today.”

To ensure that the ACLU and the bill’s current wording makes sense, I turn to the best expert I know about the terror of being forced into an abusive marriage.

I turn to Tasneem.

She says that her father was Muslim and a girl in his sect was forced into marriage after being raped at 14.

“Marriage laws in the state of California allow minors to be married with no minimum age. This loophole,” Tasneem states, “allows sexual predators to marry minors, thus circumventing statutory rape laws.”

So what’s the solution?

“I strongly believe,” the expert declares, “that the marriage age should be 18.”