The study finds that rape and sexual exploitation are prevalent in Nyanza, Coast, Western, and Nairobi, the provinces in which researchers carried out the study. As might be expected, female, HIV-positive orphans are at the highest risk of forced marriage, in addition to other forms of abuse.

It is striking that a place of such natural beauty, spiritual generosity, and cultural strength holds this dark reality. There is so much life in Kenya ... and yet, as these jarring statistics show, the lives of many Kenyan women are compromised. Somehow, both truths exist.