Each year, 15 million girls are married before they turn 18. That amounts to 28 girls every minute, or one every two seconds. Often, child brides are only 6 or 7 years old, and their husbands may be in their 60s or 70s.
These girls are forever robbed of their childhood and their dreams, and instead become a wife to someone. Whilst we’d like to think it absolutely wouldn’t happen in developed nations, how would people react if they were aware that such an act could take place in New York?
YouTube prankster Cody Persin staged a mock marriage between a 12-year-old girl and a 65-year-old man in Feb. 2016 to gauge the reactions of onlookers in Times Square, New York
Cody posed as the photographer taking “happy snaps” of the young bride and her partner, but what he captured were many shocked and indignant onlookers, and they weren’t happy at all. Some approached the young girl and questioned her, whilst others angrily confronted the “groom.” Then there were others insisting on taking her away from the ceremony.
Cody’s experiment did work; onlookers were prepared to stand up for the young bride
Nearly everyone in the vicinity was focused on the “ceremony”
An onlooker confronts the groom
People in Times Square can’t believe what they’re seeing
This lady couldn’t ignore it
She insisted to whisk the young girl away
In Virginia state, up until July 2016, girls as young as 12 were legally allowed to be married if they had parental consent and were pregnant
Between 2004 and 2013, there were 4,500 children under the age of 18 married in Virginia state
The law has since changed in Virginia, and similar bills were passed in California, Maryland, New Jersey, and New York earlier in 2016
In many parts of the globe, child marriage is still an issue
Every day, 33,000 girls are sold into marriage, many of them still 12 and under
They are born into a life of poverty, and for sale for that reason
They have no voice, no childhood
Girls Not Brides is a global partnership consisting of more than 800 organizations
Their prime focus is to end child marriage, and give girls some support
We wish them luck in their endeavors
“The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing”—Albert Einstein.
Below is the video of the mock wedding, and the reaction of New Yorkers:
Credit: NTD
