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Pregnant Woman, 37, Defends Marriage to 15-Year-Old

ByABC News via logo
December 13, 2005, 8:17 AM

Dec. 13, 2005 — -- A Georgia woman facing child molestation and statutory rape charges for allegedly sleeping with her son's 15-year-old friend is defending their relationship.

Lisa Lynette Clark and the boy she married using a loophole in Georgia law that waives parental consent and age requirements for a teenager to marry if the bride is pregnant. Clark will be eight months' pregnant with the couple's child when she is arraigned on Dec. 21.

"From the beginning he told me and my children he was 17 and I didn't want to date him then and I told him 'no' repeatedly," Clark said. "I finally agreed. I wasn't even comfortable in public with him at first because of his age, and, but, you know we got along so well. Everything. He was just so nice."

The boy's grandmother and legal guardian, Judy Hayles, said she was outraged when she discovered love letters written by Clark to her grandson.

"She said we wanted, she just wanted us all to be family," Hayles told "Good Morning America" in an interview last month. "I said: 'I have a family. I don't need one with a pedophile in it.'"

Clark remains out on bail awaiting her day in court. She is adamant that her relationship is not a mistake and that she does not deserve to be punished.

"I can't really say what's right or wrong," Clark said. "From the beginning of time up until the 1900s that wasn't a moral issue."