WEARING a cheap wedding dress her mum had bought online, 13-year-old Angel McGehee smiles awkwardly into the camera.

Just moments later she would marry her boyfriend, an almost 17-year-old boy she met through friends online - in the living room of her California home.

7 Angel on her wedding day, aged 13 Credit: Angel McGehee

Angel is one of almost a quarter of a million children - some as young as 10 - who have been legally married since 2000.

The ceremony was conducted by her mother - and attended by her siblings, stepfather and other family members.

Afterwards the two shell-shocked youngsters were told to go into the next room to consummate their marriage.

Angel’s mum soon encouraged the couple - still kids themselves - to get pregnant.

Homeschooled and naive, Angel felt she had no choice but to do her mother’s bidding - and when her husband began being violent towards her she had no idea where to turn. 7

Cult-like upbringing

“I pretty much grew up in a cult - with my mom as the leader - that’s the best way to describe my childhood,” she reveals.

“I didn’t go to school, my mother was anti-establishment so I never went to the doctor or dentist.

“We were home schooled - although when I say home-schooled - it was really neglect because when my father died when I was 10 - she stopped teaching us.

Child marriage in the US: the facts - Child marriage is legal in 50 states - 207,468 children were married in the US between 2000 and 2015 - 25 states, including California, Nevada, Washington, Michigan, Pennsylvania and New Jersey have no minimum age for a child to marry - In most states the minimum marriage age is 18 - but exceptions in each of these states allow those younger than 18 to marry with parental consent and/or judicial approval - Three 10-year-old girls were married to men aged, 24, 25 and 31 in Tennessee in 2001 - A 14-year-old girl married a 74 year-old man in Alabama, according to official state statistics - In New Jersey alone 3,500 children were married between 1995 and 2012

7 Angel's mother flew her to see a boy she met online when she was just 11 Credit: Angel McGehee

“I never learned more than multiplication. I learned to read and write from the internet so pretty much I didn’t have an education.

“We were very isolated from everybody else and I attribute that to one of the main reasons happened to me because there was no one around who asked questions.

“I started talking to boys on forums when I was about 11 and there was one boy that I said I liked - but I was 11 so I wasn’t even sure I understood what that meant.

"I certainly didn’t understand about being in a relationship or what that might be like.

“But my mum offered to fly our entire family out to New York to meet him and his parents. Looking back that was bizarre - who takes their 11-year-old girl to meet a potential suitor?”

While it didn’t work out with that boy, Angel began “online dating” one of his friends, a 16-year-old who came out to visit her in Pollock Pines, a small mountain town surrounded by forest in northern California.

Bizarrely the boy’s mother agreed to leave her son in California so they could marry.

And just days later the couple were married in Angel’s living room with her mother officiating the ceremony and her stepfather, aunt and three siblings as guests.

The Sun investigates the heartbreaking issue of child marriage in the US

7 Angel says she was physically and mentally abused during her marriage Credit: Angel McGehee

Disney princess

“My mother was very matriarchal she was in charge of the show,” Angel said.

“I wore the most hideous dress she bought off the internet and my husband wore a white tuxedo.

“I remember being excited - I was 13 and I remember thinking this would be great. I was in a Disney Princess mode of thinking.

“I had no idea what being married actually meant - I just wanted to be with a boy.

“I remember standing there as we said our own vows and afterwards it was pretty much like ‘Oh you can go consummate the marriage now.'

“I had no idea about sex apart from what I’d learned online or from TV - I even remember my brother making a joke to my husband about ‘being gentle’ or something like that. It was so embarrassing.

“We just went to a different room and that’s where it happened - I felt like I had no privacy or control over how I wanted it to be.”

7 Angel wants to use her voice so other youngsters don't have to go through the same abuse Credit: Angel McGehee

Abused and isolated

Soon after the wedding, Angel’s husband became violent and abusive - even trying to strangle her.

Encouraged by her mother, Angel soon fell pregnant - but the violence did not stop.

The family, who all lived together, moved from California to a remote rural home in northern Idaho — where Angel became even more isolated.

“My mother wanted us to start having children right away so I had my first son when I was 15,” she said.

“She wanted us all to be with her forever that’s why she wanted me to get married and have children so young because she wanted to control me.

America’s shocking child bride epidemic Read more harrowing stories from child marriage survivors in Sun Online's heart-wrenching series Ava: 'I was picked up from school, taken to the courthouse and married at just 13'. Naila: ‘I was engaged at 8, married at 15 then repeatedly raped by my husband’. Sherry: 'I was forced to marry my rapist aged just 11 after he got me pregnant at 9'.

“She used to talk about how she wanted a ‘tribe’ - that’s what she called us.

“We quickly moved to North Idaho because my mother started getting dirty looks from the neighbours.

“That’s why my mum moved us to Idaho I have no doubt - because she didn’t want people asking questions.

“My husband was incredibly physically abusive, emotionally abusive and cheated on me throughout our marriage - but I didn’t know any different because he was the only guy I’d ever been with.

“He would strangle me and shove me, all sorts of horrific things. He even did it when I was pregnant. I remember he strangled me once after my son was born.

7 Angel burnt all the photos from her wedding day except this one - in a bid to forget her past Credit: Angel McGehee

“For the longest time I didn’t realise that I shouldn’t have to put up with that. I knew it was wrong but I didn’t know what to do about it.

“My mother was also abusive - not physically but mentally abusive and controlling. I didn’t know where to turn.”



Long-lasting scars

It took over five years before Angel summoned the strength to report her husband - after a friend introduced her to a church group for domestic violence survivors.

Eventually when she was 19 and pregnant with her third child, Angel’s husband was jailed for nine months for domestic abuse and never returned home.

Angel eventually remarried and had two more children with her new husband - but she still lives with the scars from her child marriage.

And she still wonders why no adult ever stepped in to stop it.

“If just someone had said something - if my aunt had tried to stop it or my stepdad or the neighbours who knew my boyfriend was moving in with me - my life would have been so different.

“Why did no one call CPS? Why didn’t his mother say anything?

“I could have been who I wanted to be or gone to school or any of those things I wish I could have done.

“My eldest son is 11 now and I can’t imagine him going through this that young. I don’t know how my mother could have thought that was OK.

7 Angel now lives with her second husband and five children in Idaho Credit: Angel McGehee

“She never registered me when I was born so I didn’t have a birth certificate or anything - so as well as my age - that stopped me from getting a job, getting a bank account, learning to drive.

“During our marriage my husband worked at a grocery store and I just stayed home with the kids.

“He controlled the finances and controlled whether or not I got money. I couldn’t even get a library card.

“I couldn’t drive so I had to get someone else to drive me everywhere.

“All this made me incredibly susceptible to being controlled and abused because I couldn’t do anything for myself.”

Surprisingly Angel has come to forgive her mother - even though she has never apologised for what she did - but they remain estranged.

Angel, now 26, is focused on using her voice to help end child marriage - and inspire those women still trapped in marriages to leave.

“Child marriage is wrong in all its forms - you can’t even buy cigarettes under 18 so you shouldn’t be able to get married,” she said.

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“We are not living in the 16th century, women can buy property, we can have a job so it’s horrible to take away a woman’s choice when she has so many options.

“If she wants to grow up and be mum and a wife then that’s great but if somebody took her ability to choose that when she was 13 - it can never be changed.

“It’s even worse that it’s allowed in America because we have so many freedoms.”

Tomorrow, Sherry tells her harrowing story of being forced to marry her rapist aged just 11, after he had got her pregnant at 9.