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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 Floridastan: The story was accompanied by a photograph of a young girl alongside a much older man. That photograph was (predictably) interpreted by readers as representing the wedding described in the quoted New York Times opinion piece, leaving them with the impression that the events related in that piece had taken place in 2017: That New York Times 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 rather by failed legislative action in New Jersey aimed at preventing marriages involving minors: The photograph used by Opposition Report was unrelated to those events and originated with a prank or social experiment published to YouTube in 2016 in order to raise awareness of child marriage: In the referenced clip, bystanders vociferously opposed the phony marriage: Although there's no reason to suspect Sherry Johnson fabricated her story (Times author Nicholas Kristof reported 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.
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