Fraidy Reiss was trapped in an abusive marriage, which was arranged, for fifteen years before she could liberate herself.

She then went on to found an organization, Unchained at Last, to help liberate other women from forced arranged marriages. Unchained also advocates to ban underaged marriages across all 50 states.

Fraidy Reiss: My shadchan once tried to set me up with a guy whose last name was Katz and I cried and put on a scene. I said, “I will not spend the rest of my life as Fraidy Katz.”

JK: Fraidy Reiss is 49 and describes herself as a survivor of an arranged marriage. She says it was also a forced marriage that took her a dozen years to escape. She left the Haredi world and Judaism itself, describing herself as a devout atheist.

Fraidy Reiss: I grew up in Brooklyn. My mother was from a Chasidishe family, Stolin, which is a very small sect. It has a bigger presence in Israel. A lot of people in the U.S. don't even know of it. And my father was Litvish or Yeshivish. It was not a happy childhood. My father was extremely violent. He almost killed my mother, on at least two occasions. I was the youngest of six. And when I was four, the rabbis basically instructed my mother to get up and leave, which was very unusual, then divorce was almost unheard of in the community then, and we fled.

Fraidy Reiss: It was basically made clear to me that I was going to be married off as a teenager. It would be an arranged marriage to a stranger. I always understood that and knew that. And because I didn't know anything else, it seemed awesome. The way it felt to me was the only thing worse than being forced to marry was not being forced to marry. Those people who turned 20 and were still single, they really suffered. That was the last thing I wanted for myself. We got to go on a limited number of what they like to call dates. And you don't get more than six or seven of these so-called dates. I said no to my first match. He told me on one of our dates that he smokes marijuana sometimes and I thought, ‘Oh, my goodness, this is a terrible sin.’ But the other thing that did was put extra pressure on me because I already was from a very poor family and my parents were divorced. There wasn't going to be a third match. The Shadchan was not going to keep bringing matches to me. I had friends who were from a wealthy family or their father was a big rabbi. So maybe they felt like they couldn't use more than one no card. I didn't have more than one no card. The guy that I did say yes to was a chain smoker. And somehow I didn't see that as a sin. Twice when we were out on our so called dates, he got into physical fights with other people on the street. When I say a physical fight, I mean rolling around in the gutter. The stranger that they married me off to turned out to be violent and abusive. I thought I was getting out of an abusive house and marriage would be an escape for me. But instead, one week after our wedding, the stranger I was married to, woke up late, became enraged, punched his fist through the wall. And then it was a few days after that, that he threatened to kill me for the first time. And both of those became the norm in our marriage. And even though it was clear to me from that first week that this was not a good marriage, I was trapped for 15 years before I was able to get out.

JK: For those outside the Haredi world, spending 15 years with a husband who made death threats might seem inconceivable.

Fraidy Reiss: The options for leaving in that community leaving a marriage, especially for a woman, they're almost non-existent. Here's the problem. Within two months, I was pregnant. My first child was born 11 months after my wedding. So that makes it very difficult to leave, especially when you combine that with the fact that I was required to remain financially dependent on my husband. So, the way it works is you go straight from your parents house to your husband's house. And then once I was married, I was not allowed to have a job, a bank account or credit card. So, I know if I leave, not only am I going hungry, but my baby is going hungry. There is also limited legal rights for women in that community. A man is allowed to divorce his wife, but under the religious law in that community, I as a woman did not even have the legal right to end my own marriage. So, a way out for someone like me, really the only way out would have been if my family would have taken me back in and then I could have become an agunah or a chained woman, a woman chained to a dead marriage. But my family refused to take me back in.

Fraidy Reiss: At first, I did not ask my family to take me back in. I thought I could fix this. I didn't understand anything about domestic violence. I knew it wasn't right. And I knew I shouldn't live in fear. But I didn't know what that meant. So, the first thing that I tried to do was ask my father among for help. This was the man who, when I got engaged told me that he had done me a favor, letting me marry his son, because my parents were divorced. So, I was damaged goods. What a thing to tell an 18 year old, right. And I believed him. When he was making kiddish, the prayer on the wine on Shabbos. And I was at the table, he would turn his back to the table, as if there's a naked woman in the room, and he's not allowed to make this blessing. This is the way this man treated me. And, somehow, I got it into my head that I'm going to ask him for help because my husband really respected his father. And I knew if his father said, Hey, cut it out, that there was some chance that he would cut it out. I knew my father in law's schedule. So, I arranged to call him at a time that I knew he was going to be home alone with no one else around. And I told him, You know, I'm living in fear for my life. I had to explain that my husband had these violent outbursts. And he cut me off to say, you're not going to convince me that there's something wrong with my son. That was his response. And then I tried a rabbi. Ironically, my husband had to help me get the appointment. I told him I have some lady issues that I need to discuss. And he got me this appointment. Big Rabbi. We had moved by then to Lakewood, New Jersey, no one told me that this rabbi had narcolepsy. He just falls asleep. So, I'm a 19 year old, terrified out of my mind, poured my heart out to him, sobbing, looked up and found that he was sleeping

JK: It took years for Fraidy Reiss to let her mother know just how bad it was living with a violent husband.

Fraidy Reiss: She happened to come visit at a time when my husband had just had a really violent outburst and he had kicked in the front door, we had a deadbolt lock. And that was when I finally said to her, I'm afraid for my life, I'm afraid for my kids lives. Can I move in with you just temporarily till I figure out my next step. And her response was to turn around and walk out of the room. She never even answered me. My older daughter was a little kid, maybe five? And she said to me, why didn't Bubbie answer you? And I said, she did answer me. That was her answer.

Fraidy Reiss: I finally put a plan in place to get out on my own. And it took me five years, during which time I saved up money. I applied to Rutgers University, became the first person my family to go to college. And once I graduated and had a cereal box with $40,000, in cash, I was able to get the hell out.

JK: You heard that right. Fraidy Reiss somehow managed to sock away $40 thousand in a box of Total whole grain breakfast cereal. Here’s how she did it.

Fraidy Reiss: When I was going to Rutgers University, getting my degree in journalism, during my last semester, I got a job as a reporter at the Asbury Park Press. And I was the only person at the Asbury Park Press who did not have direct deposit for my salary. Instead, I would get a check and I would go to one of those sketchy check cashing places. And I would put the money in the box of cereal and my husband would say, Hey, what happened to your paycheck? And I would say, I'm so stupid. I don't really know what I did with that money. I probably spent it on shoes, you know how women are. And of course, he believed that. He would fly into these rages, you know all the time, and then afterward, he would feel guilty. So, he would go out and buy me jewelry. It did not hurt at all to go back in to the store the next day. And of course, I had to be careful because I didn't want them telling him what I was doing. So, I would have to make up a story about how he was aware of it. I would exchange I would say oh, we realize I just need something much smaller, something much cheaper, and then the rest of that cash in my box. Also, wigs are expensive. And these wigs don't last you have to replace them every six months to a year because they oxidize. So twice a year he would give me $5,000 to go buy a wig. And I would wash and blow dry my old wig and say hey, what do you think about my new wig and that $5,000 in my box of cereal.

JK: With her growing nest egg and sense of financial independence, Fraidy Reiss began to openly rebel against the Haredi standards of tznius or modesty.

Fraidy Reiss: Once I stopped covering my hair that the community just lost its mind about. That was when my family told me that they were sitting Shiva for me and cut off all contact with me. And then things got really bad at home because every time my husband walked into shul or had any interaction with anyone else in the community, it became the same thing. “Your wife is walking around, without her hair covered. You gotta get her back in line. What, you can't control your own wife? What kind of weak man are you, you can't control your wife? So he would come home and rage, which is why he would come home from shul every time just drunk and furious. And that was why he was getting more and more violent. Also, I no longer had a family to protect me. I was very unsafe.

Fraidy Reiss: It was December 9 2006, the day that I escaped. I actually celebrate December 9 as my independence day. At that point, I was getting close to graduating from Rutgers University. So, this was my five-year plan coming to a close. My graduation gift to myself was going to be escape. Shabbos was a very, very difficult and dangerous time for me and my girls when I was married, because Shabbos he was home. And he was also drunk, he would go to shul. And he would come home drunk and enraged. It got to a point where Shabbos meant that we would go into one of my daughter's bedrooms, she had a lock on her bedroom door, we would lock the door, and we'd sit against the wall farthest away from the door, me in the middle, one of my kids on each side with my arms around them. My then husband would pound on the door screaming, “Open up, I'm going to kill all of you, I'm going to kill me, we're all going to die you [beep] whore. Open up this door.” And we were sitting there on the floor doing our Shabbos ritual of having the bejesus scared out of us. And I suddenly said, “Wait a minute, why am I doing this? Why am I taking this? I don't have to take this anymore.” And I stood up and I opened the door to my daughter's bedroom. And I told this raving lunatic standing there. “You need to shut up now you're scaring me and you're scaring the kids. And if you don't stop, I don't care that it's Shabbos. I'm taking the kids, I'm getting in the car. And I'm leaving with them.” Getting in the car and driving down the street on Shabbos is a sin, a very grave sin. All the neighbors would know. You know there was no way that he believed me. So, he continued ranting and I said, “Kids were getting in the car.” And they both looked at me and said, “What? Really?” And I said, “Yeah.” And we got in the car and I drove down our driveway and drove down the street with all the neighbors out there, took the kids to the freehold raceway Mall. And we watched the second movie my kids had ever watched in their lives, waited several hours. And then after Shabbos was over, I figured okay, things must have calmed down by now. We drove back home. And I found my husband disappeared. He just didn't tell me where he was. And he was gone for about a week during which time I changed the locks. And then about a week later he came back home and tried to get inside and couldn't. And my exact words to him were, “I have tasted life without you and it is sweet. You are not coming back.”

JK: Reiss filed for divorce in a civil court. She had decided to leave the Haredi world.

Fraidy Reiss: During my last year at Rutgers University, knowing I'm about to graduate, I'm doing this I'm getting out of here. My plan was still to get out of the marriage but to stay in the religion. But at that point, it was [beep] all of you. I want out of this entire religion.

Fraidy Reiss: Being on my own was a major adjustment. I didn't know anything about the outside world. English is my first language and I'm grateful for that because I know people, I have friends who went through that same adjustment and their first language was Yiddish. Imagine how overwhelming that is. Also, the fact that I had never shaved my head, so when I said I'm not covering my hair anymore, I went to a salon and got a haircut. And then I was able to walk outside and then drive home with all four windows of my Honda Accord down on the Garden State Parkway and the wind just whipping through my hair. I have friends who took them months to grow out their hair. So at least I didn't have that. My kids were seven and 11 when we made this transition from ultra-Orthodox Judaism, to devout atheism. Talk about whiplash! So, I remember one of the first things we did: shopping for jeans. My younger daughter, seven, came home, she changed into her jeans never got out of them. She's been wearing jeans ever since. My older daughter, they sat in the closet for several weeks. Then she started wearing one pair, she slowly got into it. Now she loves her some jeans. Me, I still cannot wear jeans. I'm sitting here in 2024, I don't wear jeans. I just still don't like them. I never got used to them. Anyway, so it was a little bit of that we went to eat non-kosher. My youngest daughter jumped right into, hey, let's order shrimp. What does shrimp tastes like? I just tasted lobster for the first time a few weeks ago. That's how long it took me to work up to lobster. My kids somehow were able to jump right out of that whole mentality of God is watching us every second of the day. And if we step out of line, which means you know, carrying a tissue in your pocket on Shabbos. We’re not allowed to a carry things outside of the house. He's gonna smite us. They jumped immediately out of that mindset. So, some things still were a major adjustment. Wearing a swimsuit in public on the beach. I mean, that's a big deal. Basically, walking around in your underwear. That takes time. I was, of course,  worried at first. I had told them their whole lives because I had believed my whole life that God is watching us every second of the day. There’s this obnoxious song that goes “Hashem is here, Hashem is there. Hashem is truly everywhere.” I mean, it's this brainwash of every second of the day, even when you're in the bathroom. God is watching and even if you don't say something out loud, God can hear your thoughts inside your head. I mean, it's a terrifying existence. So, I was very worried that they would not be able to snap out of it. For me, it was okay, but I did worry about the kids and they were just very excited to be able to watch TV on Saturday. I think the TV is really what did it for them.

JK: With her financial independence, Reiss worked initially at a daily newspaper in New Jersey, then as a private investigator. In 2011 she founded the non-profit Unchained At Last to fight forced and child marriage.

Fraidy Reiss: Unchained At Last is a survivor led nonprofit organization, working to end forced and child marriage in the United States. We have provided crucial comprehensive, often life-saving services always for free to more than 1040 individuals across the United States as they were escaping forced marriage and rebuilding their life. We have taken on this little project in our spare time of changing the law in all 50 states to make the marriage age 18, no exceptions. In other words, to end child marriage. Not as easy as you would think. Because when we first started doing this child marriage was legal in all 50 U.S. states and legislators are clinging to this archaic practice that destroys girls lives and creates a nightmarish legal trap for them. But over the last few years, we have been able to help change the laws in 13 US states, which means we have only 37 to go.

JK: To learn more about Fraidy Reiss and Unchained at last, visit them on-line at unchainedatlast.org. This has been a Shtetl podcast. I’m Jon Kalish. Thanks for listening.