Young love yesterday failed to melt the heart of a Wollongong magistrate who knocked back an application from an under-age pregnant teenager to marry her boyfriend.
Magistrate Michael Stoddart said the couple had failed to establish the required "exceptional or unusual circumstances" to enable him to give them the green light to go ahead with an early wedding.
Sixteen-year-old Emma Gregory from Warilla, seven months' pregnant with her first child, applied to the court for approval to marry the father, Steven Megson, 18.
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"I love Steven and we want to spend the rest of our lives together," she said in Wollongong Local Court.
Emma said she had been raised as a Jehovah's Witness and wanted to live by those standards.
"We want to bring up our child in a family environment according to the Bible," she said.
"If you live together in household you have to live as husband and wife."
Emma said that she and her fiance were living in separate rooms in her parents' Warilla home which was putting a strain on the living arrangements.
Steven gave evidence that he and Emma had been going out for a year and he had made up his mind early that Emma was the person he wanted to marry.
He said he had proposed after they had been together for three months, which was before she got pregnant.
Emma's mother, Richelle, gave evidence that she and her husband had brought their children up with high moral standards.
"Emma wants to do what is right in God's eyes," she said.
"I'm old-fashioned about the kids not having sex in the house ... Emma wants to be married so she can have that sort of intimacy with Steven.
"We have all discussed it for the past five months and keep coming back to marriage ... I believe it will strengthen their relationship."
Mrs Gregory's husband, Stephen, told the court his wife was 18 when they were married and they had been together for 20 years.
Mr Stoddart said that under the Marriage Act, for a person between 16 and 18, he had to establish there were exceptional or unusual circumstances before he could approve an application.
"Your situation is not ideal but it has happened," he said.
"Emma says she and Steven love each other but getting married at 16 is another matter.
"I appreciate the difficulties you have with your religious beliefs and the accommodation difficulties at home but there is not the necessary evidence to support the application.
"You will have to wait 13 months (until Emma turns 18) and I hope you feel the same way then about each other."
Outside the court Emma and Steven said they were bitterly disappointed.
"We got tongue-tied and weren't able to express our love in the way we wanted," Emma said.
"We know a lot of people our age don't bother about marriage but our friends have been really supportive ... they thought what we were doing was old-fashioned but kind of sweet."
Steven said he would now have to move out of the Gregory house and look for alternative accommodation.
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