A YouTuber looking to raise awareness about child marriage staged an unsettling experiment involving a 50-year-old 'bride' and her 12-year-old 'groom'.
Coby Persin brought together a fake married couple to Times Square in New York City, posing as their wedding photographer in a new video and pretending the two had just tied the knot.
His goal was to see whether people would intervene when spotting the visibly distressed groom out in public with his much older bride.
The YouTuber, who previously staged a similar experiment with a 12-year-old bride and a 65-year-old groom, explained that upon researching child marriage, he found out that boys do get married off too.
He thus decided to raise awareness by recreating his experiment, this time by inverting the faux newlyweds' genders.
In Coby's video, the young groom, dressed in a tuxedo, looks clearly distressed, never speaks, and and never cracks a smile.
The white-gown-clad bride, on the contrary, looks happy and cheerful, and seemingly has no problem disclosing the age of her very young 'husband'.
When questioned, she tells people she has secured permission from the boy's parents and claims the marriage is thus legal.
A union such as the one depicted in the video would in fact be illegal in the state of New York, where the video was filmed. In June last year, new legislation made it illegal for minors under the age of 17 to marry, as reported by at the time.
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