Grandmother: Child groom’s life near normal

updated 2:22 p.m. ET April 9, 2007

GAINESVILLE, Ga. - The boy who married a woman more than 20 years older than him after fathering her child is now living like a regular teenager and dating a girl his own age, his grandmother said.

His son is 14 months old, and the infant’s mother is in jail.

The 16-year-old boy is now a high school junior, plays guitar and talks about joining the Marines, his grandmother, Judith Ann Hayles, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Hayles said the boy — who is not being identified — is “getting out of the situation he’s been in.”

Lisa Lynette Clark, now 38, was the mother of one of the boy’s high school friends. Their affair became public when Clark and the teen — then 15 — were married in November 2005 by a retired judge who performed the ceremony in his driveway.

State law allowed people younger than 16 to marry if the bride was pregnant. The law was changed last year, and now 16- and 17-year-olds can wed only with the approval of a parent or guardian and a probate judge.

Hall County authorities arrested Clark the day after the wedding and charged her with sexually molesting a minor.

Hayles said she believes Clark seduced and stalked her grandson.

“She’s a pedophile, that’s what I think,” Hayles said.

In March 2006, Clark pleaded guilty as a first offender to statutory rape and spent nine months in jail, where she gave birth. She is now serving a two-year sentence after pleading guilty to helping her teenage husband’s flight out of state in February 2006.

Hayles said she and her grandson are going to counseling. But he’s behaving more like an average teenager, she said. “He has a girlfriend now and she’s his age, thank the Lord,” Hayles said.

It was not clear whether the teen was still married to Clark. Hayles and attorneys in the case did not immediately return calls to The Associated Press on Monday.

Their son is being cared for by Clark’s former employer.

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