Photo Credit: Coby Persin
Note: we are republishing this story which originally made the news in February 2016.
In order to raise awareness regarding fixed child marriages, 21-year-old YouTuber Coby Persin decided to conduct a social experiment by asking a 12-year-old 'bride' to pose with a 65-year-old 'groom' in the middle of Times Square — despite the fact that child marriages are illegal in the United States.
Coby's started the video by telling the viewers how child marriages are not only legal in 91 countries around the world but are even performed in some parts of the United States — with some having a cut off age as low as 12 years.
To address the issue, Coby went into Times Square with an elderly man in a suit and a young girl wearing a wedding dress.
He posed them in various areas of the square, and passersby raised their eyebrows and dropped their jaws in disbelief at the “newlyweds.”
After a short while, people start approaching the man and his frowning child bride. One woman was seen asking the little girl: "Where is your mom?"
When the man explained to the irate woman that the girl's parents 'gave me permission to marry her,' the woman becomes even more upset. "You've got to be kidding me!" she asserted.
In another encounter, a young man became increasingly angry and demanded to know how old the girl was, and even questioned the legality of the entire thing.
"This is bulls***! This is not right! And I'm sure if we called the cops, you would get locked up!" he said.
When he attempted to approach the couple, the 'groom' said that they had brought along security for their safety.
One woman, addressing the situation in a far more relaxed manner, questioned the pair and eventually grabbed the young girl's arm to take her away from the man after the girl failed to respond to the woman's question asking her if she wanted to be there.
Persin ended the video with a shocking statistic about child marriages, revealing that 33,000 underage girls are married every day and stripped of their childhood.
Sources: Daily Mail
