A Cambodian TV channel faces a social media backlash after it tricked a 13-year-old girl into thinking she would be reunited with her mother, but met a man in drag instead.
Autumn Allen, a 13-year-old singer, who moved to Cambodia with her father when she was six, was due to meet her estranged mother.
However, the emotional moments leading up to the reunion turned out to be a bizarre Mother’s Day prank, and producers of the show “Penh Chet Ort” (Like it or not) faced outrage from social media users.
According to the Phnom Penh Post, the young singer had not met her mother for more than a decade.
She told the presenter that her “dream to meet her mother would come true”.
But it emerged that meeting her mother was not on the cards, and instead cross-dressing comedian and the show’s judge, Chuop Rolin, graced the stage.
She told the newspaper that she was initially disappointed, but that “Rolin made me laugh so I had fun doing the show”.
The channel has subsequently apologised for the joke, which social media followers labelled as “brainless”.
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A letter of apology from MYTV.
Posted by Autumn Allen on Monday, May 11, 2015