Photograph of girls in white dresses does not show child brides

Thousands of people have shared a post that shows a photograph of what it implies are child brides. But the photograph does not show this. 

The Facebook reel, which has over 2,600 shares, has a split screen and overlaid text that says: “Pedophilia is legal in some countries [sic].” The top half of the post shows a photo of a line of girls in white dresses holding hands with older men. 

But the image of the little girls actually shows them attending the weddings of their older relatives, rather than being brides themselves.

One of the earliest examples of the photo Full Fact could find online was in a 2009 article for a…