TALLAHASSEE (FL)
Miami Herald
February 1, 2018
By Elizabeth Koh
For most of her life, the people around Sherry Johnson pushed her to stay silent.
When she was raped for the first time at age 8 by the bishop of her church, Johnson’s mother accused her of lying, she said. When her mother’s husband and a church deacon also began to rape her, she stayed silent out of fear.
When she became pregnant at age 10 by the deacon, she was taken out of school, forced to marry him and had five more children with him before she was able to obtain a divorce.
For decades, Johnson, 58, remained voiceless about her past, cycling through two more abusive relationships. But in 2012, spurred by a desire to make sure what happened to her would not happen to any other child, she began to push lawmakers in Florida to close the loophole that allowed her marriage to be recognized by the law.
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