Claim: Social media users shared a photo collage containing an image of a girl and an elderly man, claiming the child bled to death after the “husband” raped her on the wedding night.
Verdict: Misleading! The images were taken from different contexts and assembled into a collage to convey a false message.
Full text
Despite global and local interventions, child marriage remains a persistent challenge. It is often described as a harmful practice and a form of gender-based violence that violates the rights, health, and dignity of children, especially girls. While boys can also be victims of underage marriages, girls are disproportionately affected as they are often married off to older men.
Apart from the unequal power dynamics child marriage reinforces, it increases a girl’s vulnerability to abuse and control within marriage. Most frequently, child brides suffer severe health issues arising from pregnancy complications, sexually transmitted infections (STIs), and experience gender-based violence.
International frameworks such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), the Convention on Consent to Marriage, Minimum Age for Marriage and Registration of Marriages, amongst others, have established the illegality of child marriage. However, there are still countries that allow child marriage under certain conditions.
Recently, a Facebook user, Julius Dehnam, shared a photo collage showing a girl and an older man with a caption over the photo. The message on the image claims the young girl is 8-year-old Rawan, who died from internal bleeding sustained from intercourse. The groom is allegedly a 40-year-old man, and the wedding was reportedly held in the town of Meedi, Hijjah territory in Northwestern Yemen. The post was also shared here, here, here, here, and here.
DUBAWA observed that the post had since attracted outrage from social media users. While some questioned the claim’s authenticity, others condemned the act, factoring Islam into the conversation.
One user, Michael Ezekiel Gbenga, quipped, “Are you really sure of this information?”
Another user, Dace Wiping, wrote, “Shame on Yorubas for choosing Islam…”
Antoinette Halge Pereira commented, “Even animals wait for their mate to mature. Worse than animals.”
Given the sensitive nature of the topic and the outrage it sparked, DUBAWA fact-checked the claim.
Verification
DUBAWA conducted a reverse image search on the viral image to ascertain the true occurrence. Interestingly, the search results returned similar narratives. One post even linked the image to a 2013 incident in Yemen where residents protested the death of a child bride.
Some reports on this incident cited The Guardian’s coverage of the protest. However, DUBAWA observed that there was no such image in The Guardian’s report. The 2013 incident was also reported here. The Guardian referenced a report by Reuters, which also did not feature any image.
Further checks showed that the image of the man in the collage was taken from a 2011 report. The report noted that the man was jailed for indecently assaulting three girls when he was an imam at a Swindon mosque. The report identified him as 67-year-old Ebrahim Kazi.
DUBAWA’s investigations also traced the girl’s image to a report on Russia’s broadcast channel, Russia-1, where conversations about child marriages were held. The image was featured in the broadcast dated Oct. 11, 2012. From The Guardian’s report, the marriage took place in September 2013.
“Arwa Othman, head of Yemen’s House of Folklore and a leading rights campaigner, said the girl, identified only as Rawan, was married to a 40-year-old late last week in the town of Meedi in Hajjah province, north-western Yemen,” part of the report states.
Further keyword searches show that the image had originally been used in 2013 for illustrative purposes only, as seen in this report and here.
Conclusion
The images in the collage are unrelated to the alleged child bride’s death in Yemen. The man in the photo is also not connected to the girl in the image. The claim is therefore misleading.