My name is Lee Marsh. I am 62 years old, and until recently I carried a family secret for 45 years.
In 1970 my mother arranged for me to marry a man I did not want to marry. I recently spoke about this to Maclean's magazine, which is how I was found and invited to come here.
When I was 17 years old, my mother, who is one of Jehovah's Witnesses, decided that I needed to be married. For several months she would take me from one congregation to another, looking for a Jehovah's Witness for me to marry. She had two criteria: they had to be willing to marry me, and they had to be one of Jehovah's Witnesses. Many of the men she introduced me to were 10 or 20 years older than I was, or even more, and she quickly discovered that these men all had mental health issues. She then moved on to the next person on her list.
During this time, a young man was coming to our home for a Bible study group. After the group he would stay, and my mother would spend hours trying to convince him that this was the one true religion. After a while, she got me involved in sitting there and trying to teach him the beliefs. I turned 18 in June of that year. Two weeks later, while I was in the kitchen talking to this man and explaining more of the beliefs, my mother walked into the room and said, “If you're going to continue to come here, you two have to get married.” Then she walked out of the room. I was stunned. I didn't know what to say.
He looked at me and said, “So what do you think?” I was too afraid to say no. I did what my mother expected. My mother was listening around the corner, and she came back in and started making preparations for a wedding. He wasn't baptized yet, so she told him that he would have to call one of the elders in the congregation and make all of the arrangements to get baptized in four weeks. She arranged for the wedding to occur the week after that.
My mother made all the preparations. She did everything. Then someone asked us how long we had been seeing each other. Witnesses don't date. They're only allowed to marry other Witnesses. They're just supposed to know who they like, start talking to them, and decide whether they want to marry them. The parents or the elders in the congregation will see these two people talking and say, “Ah, we have to get these two hooked up together.” They start pressuring the two regarding plans to get married.
But there I was, with somebody asking me how long we'd been seeing each other, and I had no answer. We had never been on a date. My mother decided that we needed to go out on a date in those five weeks between her proposal and the wedding. She arranged for us to go to the movies, with one of my brothers as a chaperone because we would not be allowed to be alone together.
I had known this man for six months. We had never had one personal conversation. I knew almost nothing about him, and he only knew what he saw when he came to our home. In five weeks she proposed, pushed him to get baptized, and pushed me into wedding preparations, and then we were married.
You might ask why I went through with it. I wanted to break it off, because I really didn't want to marry him, but I didn't dare to, for two important reasons.
The first was the fear of my mother. Jehovah's Witnesses believe in the rod of discipline. In my mother's case, it was a leather strap, and all five of her children got it. My last beating was shortly before this proposal. I was still 17. Saying no to my mother was not even something that I consciously ever thought of. I didn't say no to her about anything.
The second was the fear of the elders in the congregation. Once two Witnesses are engaged, they're considered “as if married”, although they're still not allowed to live together or have sex. Breaking off an engagement is as serious an issue as getting a divorce, which is not allowed. That person can face disciplinary action. It could mean being expelled or excommunicated from the congregation if the wedding is called off.
But over and above the fear, there is an issue of undue influence. In each of the stories that you have heard or you may hear, the issue of undue influence becomes more apparent. Undue influence is a process whereby a person's normal and healthy mental processes are replaced with the thoughts and feelings of the group leader. Individuals are not encouraged to become autonomous or to learn to think for themselves. They are systematically taught to follow the will of the leader or leaders, or parents. The leader decides what those under them do, what information they have, what they think or believe, and even what they feel. I believe that undue influence is at the core of many arranged marriages.
While my case is extreme for Jehovah's Witnesses, I did a poll of other Witnesses, thinking that I'm, of course, the only one. Thirty-seven people said that they felt pushed into an early marriage that they did not want or were not ready for. One man said that because he was gay, his parents believed his condition could be cured by having sex with a woman, so they pushed him into getting married. Most said that they were pushed into it because they were seen talking to a boy, and that was enough for the parents and the elders to start questioning them about intentions for marriage, and then pushing them towards it. Almost everyone was married before they turned 19, some as young as 16 years old.
In almost every closed group that demands members marry only within the group, undue influence will be at the crux of how these children are pushed into marriages they don't want and are unable to prevent. Arranged marriages are not just about immigrants bringing customs with them from their own countries. The French part of my family has lived in Canada for 16 generations. The other side of my family came from the U.K. and has been in Canada for four generations.
Many orthodox and fundamental religions follow the same practices of limiting a child's contact with the outside community and encouraging young marriages for people only within the group, which serves to keep them in the group. These issues are for all Canadians, even those of us who have been in Canada all of our lives with families that would never be considered immigrants.
Thank you.