Child bride’s panic
‘Why did no-one step in to help me?’
An actor who played a child bride in a World Vision campaign was surprised at how few bystanders publicly objected to the stunt.
Kylie Thompson, 18, and fellow actor Alan Fish, 55, walked out of Auckland’s St Paul’s Church on Friday afternoon to have their photos taken.
The young bride’s face was sombre, her eyes often down, while her groom grasped her hand.
The act was part of a Herald-World Vision campaign — Not for Sale. The campaign aims to highlight child marriage in Asia, where one in nine girls are married before they turn 15.
Some passersby turned their heads in horror and muttered words of disgust from afar but not one person approached the newlyweds to question the situation.
Thompson said she found herself several times on the brink of tears.
“It makes you realise, wow, this actually is happening, and you kind of think about it a bit more,” she said.
Thompson said she was disappointed more people didn’t stop.
“They probably weren’t as outspoken as I thought they would be.
“There were actually quite a few people saying congratulations, and that kind of thing — which I found quite sad considering it’s a young bride getting married off clearly when she doesn’t want to be.”
While hundreds of people witnessed the spectacle, at least half walked past without a second glance.
When later approached, some of those who walked past expressed concern gave a sigh of relief when they were told the pair were actors performing a stunt.
World Vision’s National Director Grant Bayldon said people’s reactions simply weren’t strong enough.
“We got everything there from people not noticing to people noticing and being shocked, to people noticing and just shrugging it off. I guess that’s the situation in the world at the moment — it’s a huge issue for girls, child marriage, and it’s something we need to create awareness of.”
He said it was often difficult for someone walking past to know what they could do.
“What we were doing was confronting people with something that is a major issue internationally, but they may have not been aware of before.”
On World Vision’s decision not to enlist a minor to act out the role of child bride, Bayldon said the group wanted to avoid putting a child in that position.
“We were aware that photos of the actors would potentially be around online for a long time,” Bayldon said.
“So we wanted to make sure we were using an adult, so we weren’t putting a child in the position that we might one day look back and wish they hadn’t been a part of it.”
The actor playing the role of the older groom felt society could have done better in reacting to the experiment played out before them.
Alan Fish said the experience suggested society was “so desensitised” we barely reacted to what was happening around us.
“That lack of reaction made you
think, what does it take to get people motivated enough to actually create social change?”
Around 1.2 million children were trafficked each year worldwide, and more than half of all the children around the world aged between 2 and 17 experienced some form of violence.