claim: An 11-year-old Florida girl was depicted in a shocking photograph and forced to marry a much older man who raped her.
origin: On 29 May 2017, the web site Opposition Report published an item about an 11-year-old girl purportedly forced to marry the man who raped her in â€œFloridastanâ€: < Conservatives love using child marriages in the Muslim world as an excuse to hate. While the concept of a child marrying an older man is creepy, isnâ€™t it strange that these same people have nothing to say about Christian child marriages in the United States? On Friday, the New York Times published the heartbreaking story of Sherry Johnson. Johnson was raped by a 20-year-old member of her church and became pregnant in Florida and learned very quickly that Christianity can be very cruel to its adherents. â€œIt was forced on me,â€ she told the Times. See, authorities had begun sniffing around because she was pregnant with a 20-year-oldâ€™s child, so church official made the decision that the best way to avoid embarrassment was to marry her off to her rapist. > The story appeared along with a photograph of a young girl alongside a much older man, which was (predictably) interpreted as an image of the wedding itself.Â Most readers also appeared to come away with the impression that the described events had taken place inÂ 2017. The report also referenced a New York TimesÂ opinion piece whichÂ began: < When she was a scrawny 11-year-old, Sherry Johnson found out one day that she was about to be married to a 20-year-old member of her church who had raped her. â€œIt was forced on me,â€ she recalls. She had become pregnant, she says, and child welfare authorities were investigating â€” so her family and church officials decided the simplest way to avoid a messy criminal case was to organize a wedding. â€œMy mom asked me if I wanted to get married, and I said, â€˜I donâ€™t know, what is marriage, how do I act like a wife?â€™â€ Johnson remembers today, many years later. â€œShe said, â€˜Well, I guess youâ€™re just going to get married.â€™â€ > The piece was interspersed with other tales of unwilling, underaged brides in the United States, many of whom grew up to become advocates for girls currently at risk of such abuse. But the article was prompted not by their stories, precisely, but by failed legislative action in New Jersey aimed at preventing marriages involving minors: < New Jersey lawmakers passed a bill that would make their state the first in the country to ban marriages of people under 18, but Gov. Chris Christie [in May 2017] blocked the legislation. New York legislators are considering a bill backed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo to raise the age to 17, from the current minimum, 14. > The photograph used by Opposition Report was unrelatedÂ andÂ originated with a prank or â€œsocial experimentâ€ published toÂ YouTube in 2016 in order to â€œraise awarenessâ€ of child marriage: < YouTube prankster Coby Persin is serious about raising awareness of child marriage. So he set up a faux union between a 65-year-old man and 12-year-old girl in the most public of places, New York Cityâ€™s Times Square, to see how people would react. > In the referenced clip, bystanders vociferously opposed the phony marriage: Although thereâ€™s no reason to suspect Sherry Johnson fabricated her story (Times author NicholasÂ Kristof reportedÂ that he reviewed documentary evidence) the manner in which it was presented and later recycled as though it was current, rather than decades old, was deeply misleading to social media readers. Â