Fifteen individuals and seven organizations recently received the Union County Human Relations Commission’s prestigious Unity Award for Achievement, an honor given to role models who dedicate their time and efforts to activities and programs that raise and honor the human spirit.
The awards were handed out during a special presentation held at the Kean University’s STEM Building in Union Township on May 7, 2018. The 2018 awards marked the 17th year in which the Commission has named honorees.
Fraidy Reiss, Executive Director/Founder of the Westfield non-profit Unchained At Last, was presented with the Unity Achievement Award for Achievement by a Community Organization.
Below is preprinted from the event’s program.
A woman’s wedding day is usually one of the most anticipated days of her life. But for too many women and young girls, it is a dreaded day, because they are pressured, bribed, tricked, threatened, beaten, or otherwise forced into marriage. That’s when their nightmare begins.
Fraidy Reiss’s nightmare began when she was 19 and forced into a marriage filled with violence. With no education or job, living in an insular religious community where only men have the right to grant a divorce, she felt trapped. At age 27, she defied her husband and community to become the first person in her family to go to college, and at age 32 graduated from Rutgers University with a journalism degree, and as valedictorian. She excelled professionally while managing to get divorced, and won full custody of her two daughters, and a final restraining order against her ex-husband.
She founded and now leads Unchained At Last to help others like her break free, irregardless of community, culture, or religion…whether married for many decades with many children, or facing an eventual arranged/forced marriage…whether brought here from overseas, or taken from the U.S.A. and brought to another country for such a marriage. Unchained At Last — a non-profit organization based in Westfield — is the only of its kind in the United States.
Her goal is simple: To help these women break free and rebuild their lives by providing free legal and social services and emotional support to these women as they work to push forward, regardless of immigration, religion, income status, sexual orientation, or sexual identity.
Her goal is also wonderfully complex: To lead the charge to create social, policy, and legal change to end forced and child marriage in America. Unchained raises awareness and pushes for relevant legislation to protect women and girls in the United States from coercive marriages. The organization leads a growing national movement to end child marriage in America.
Recognized internationally in print and broadcast media as an expert on forced and child marriage in America, Fraidy has also helped to write legislation to end or reduce child marriage that has been introduced and, in some cases, already passed, in multiple states. She has also led Unchained to be named an Organization in Special Status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council in 2017.
(above) Fraidy Reiss, Executive Director/Founder of the Westfield non-profit Unchained At Last, was presented with the Unity Achievement Award for Achievement by a Community Organization.
