French police have arrested a 22-year-old man believed to be British amid claims he tried to marry a nine-year-old girl at Disneyland Paris on Saturday.
Park staff were shocked to see the child, along with her family and around 100 guests, turn up for the event and quickly called the police.
Officers arrived on the scene and took the man into custody along with the girl’s 41-year-old mother, who is believed to be Ukrainian.
A statement issued by the prosecutor’s office in the nearby town of Meaux said: ‘Four people were arrested and questioned: the groom, who was believed to be the organiser of the event and is presumed to be British and aged 22; the mother of the child, a 41-year-old Ukrainian woman; and two Latvian nationals aged 55 and 24.’
It added that the ‘police custody of the British suspect and a Latvian national was also extended on charges of fraud and money laundering.’
The prosecutor’s office also confirmed that a criminal investigation has opened.
The wedding ceremony was scheduled to take place at dawn as private events such as weddings at the theme park are organised outside public opening hours.
Disneyland Paris told French newspaper Le Parisien that the event was immediately shut down by its team and that guests were stopped from entering the premises.
French police have arrested a 22-year-old man believed to be British amid claims he tried to marry a nine-year-old girl at Disneyland Paris
Officers arrived on the scene and took the man into custody along with the girl’s 41-year-old mother, who is believed to be Ukrainian
The circumstances around the wedding remain unclear, but the prosecutor’s office said that a medical examination of the young girl found that she had not suffered any violence.
They also said that they were not ruling out that the event may have been a prank, with the guests attending as possible ‘extras’.
A police source later told Le Parisien that the groom had said that he was the director of a production company and that they were shooting a video.
A source who claimed to have been a wedding guest told the French newspaper: ‘We all thought we were going to attend a wedding… Everyone was stunned, no one expected it. Disneyland did things very well.
‘They canceled everything as soon as they realized the bride was a child. We were shocked to see that.’
‘So it wasn’t a wedding, but a staged wedding filmed with around a hundred extras. They privatized Disneyland Paris, pretending it was a real wedding,’ the prosecutor’s office later explained to AFP.
