The mayor of a city in Brazil married a 16-year-old girl and appointed his new mother-in-law to Secretary of Culture and Tourism. The Brazilian prosecutor’s office is investigating Hissam Hussein Dehaini, 65, for nepotism after the marriage sparked outrage. The civil marriage took place a day after the former beauty queen turned 16.
The day after the wedding, the town’s official gazette published the decree by which the mayor appointed his new mother-in-law as Secretary of Culture and Tourism, with a salary of some 4,200 dollars a month.
Until then, the mother-in-law worked as a civil servant in the Ministry of Education with a much lower salary.
Although the marriage in this case was legal, it has raised a strong debate in Brazil about the age in which people can get married.
According to the UN, around 26 percent of women in Brazil live in a couple before the age of 18, including six percent who marry before the age of 15.
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