I was horrified when I read this article about a woman who had been married when she was fourteen and systematically raped by her husband after that. At least the man responsible (the head of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints) was convicted.
In India of course, putting a stop to the practice of child marriage still remains far off. Although most reports do talk of measures against child marriage, few seem to discuss the trauma that the child-bride must experience if she was sent off to live with (and work like a slave for) a strange family and to be raped regularly amongst the strangers. There are parts of the country where (women made scarce thanks to decades of regular female foeticide by the community) a woman who marries into a family is expected to be a sex slave for all the males of the family. Marital rape has not yet been recognised as a crime in India. Punishments for those who effect child marriages are hardly a deterrent and the marriages are usually valid in the eyes of the law.
Imagine where that leaves an Indian girl with no education or exposure to the world, who has been sent off to be raped for the rest of her life. The little that the law might offer her, she will not know about.
Update: A detailed article on how scarcity of girls has led to polyandry and desperate measures taken to procure wives. Note that this has still not led to women being treated any better. ( via Barbara Raisbeck who has also posted on the subject).
Of Cabbages and Kings 