man marries 12 year old in oz, page-28

"What is a "different" cultural background? Different to who? To the girl in question, or to the rest of us? "

What about the Roma (Gypsy) people in Europe & Eastern Europe?
Their daughters are married off between 11-13 as a rule, to teenage boys.....have never heard of a charge being laid or a conviction? And these girls are having children at that age.
It is their culture, and no one has interfered with it.
Read an interview last year with a Roma woman....a great grandmother in her early thirties. She married pregnant at 12, her daughter married about the same, granddaughter followed suit....
Its their culture, right or wrong, ....at least the young girls are not being married off to dirty old men, but teenage boys, generally of their choice...

GZ