Page 12 - IAV Digital Magazine #502

iAV - Antelope Valley Digital Magazine
Kenyan 12-year Old Girl Married To Two Men Within A Month
A 12-year-old girl has been rescued by authorities in Kenya after she was married off to two men in the span of one month.
The girl's father, in Narok County west of the capital Nairobi, forced her to marry a 51- year-old man.
She escaped and then got married to a 35-year-old before being res- cued by a chil- dren's rights cam- paigner and gov- ernment officials.
In Kenya, marry- ing someone who is under 18 years of age is a crime.
A children's rights campaigner said he was tipped off about the girl when he was in
the process of rescuing another girl.
"The father gave her off to the eld- erly man to be married. She had no option than to get married to the younger man," Joshua Kaputah from the Narok County Peace Association told
the BBC.
Mr Kaputah added that pover- ty and the closure of schools due to the coronavirus pandemic have played a role in increasing cases of child mar- riages.
"Some families are hungry and
the prospect of receiving two or three cows as dowry is quite tempting," he said.
Kenya's Standard newspaper reports that after the first groom offered four cows as a dowry, the girl protested against getting
married but was then beaten up by her male cousins.
"I escaped and since I could not go back to my father's home for fear of being rep- rimanded, I eloped with a 35- year-old man, who was mar- ried," she is quot- ed as saying in
the Standard.
Mr Kaputah said that the girl's father had then found her and taken her back to the 51-year-old.
When Mr Kaputah arrived with gov- ernment officials, the man had already disap- peared.
Police are search- ing for the father and the two men who had married the girl, who have all gone into hid- ing, local media report.
If convicted, they could be sent to prison for up to five years and/or be fined of up to 1 million Kenyan shillings (£8,000; $10,000).
iAV - Antelope Valley Digital Magazine