Not that long ago, a social experiment carried out by Youtuber Coby Persin got us all riled and not in a good way, either.
In February, he released a video titled ’65 Year Old Man Marries 12 Year Old Girl’ – a social experiment set up to test the public’s perception of child marriage.
It features a man of 65, taking pictures of his ‘child bride’ in New York's Times Square. It probably won’t come as a shock to say New Yorkers were less than impressed.
However, on the other side of America, around 4,500 children under the age of 18 got married in the state of Virginia between the years 2004 – 2013.
200 of those ‘brides’ were under 15-years-old.
It’s a shocking statistic that many were unaware of until state authorities introduced new legislation this week – updating rules that previously made it ‘legal’ for young girls aged 12-13 to get married without parental consent.
It’s a huge step forward for activists and campaigners who said the change was aimed at curbing forced marriage, human trafficking and statutory rape otherwise disguised as marriage.
The Washington Post reported that the legislation was the result of bills being passed by state politicians Republican Jill Holtzman Vogel and Democrat Jennifer McClellan.
Jeanne Smoot, Tahirih’s senior counsel for policy and strategy, also told the Washington Post. “We hope that legislators will see the efforts in Virginia as a wake-up call about how their laws can facilitate forced marriages of children.”
Similar bills were introduced in California, Maryland, New Jersey and New York this year.
All this just leads us to question why on earth has it taken so long to get this far!?
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