BANGALORE: Lakshmi (name changed) was 13 when she was dressed up as a bride. Someone paid her Rs 8,000 and her father Rs 25,000. And he goaded her to marry a 70-year-old man. The child’s daze turned into a nightmare when the seven-time husband raped her that night.Thankfully, the child was rescued from her home in Raichur district’s Lingsugur taluk by a team of social workers affiliated to Unicef and the department of women and child welfare.Two years on, Lakshmi is being counselled. With the government persisting with its efforts to prosecute the guilty, the father is absconding. Six others involved in the crime are behind bars for four-and-a-half months.Lakshmi is one of the thousands of girls whose world of innocence is shattered by forced sexual intercourse. In fact, one in every 50 girls in India is forced to have her first intercourse or other forced sexual acts when she is less than 10 years old, says Hidden in Plain Sight, a Unicef report on violence on children and adolescents across the world.The report is an outcome of a study of demographic and health surveys conducted between 2005 and 2013.People protest against rising sexual assault cases.According to the study, about 10% of Indian girls would have faced sexual violence when they are aged 10-14, and 30% in the 15-19 age group. In all, about 42% of Indian girls face sexual violence before they cross their teens.Some 77% of girls who admitted to have faced sexual violence between 15 and 19 yeas said it is their current husband or the partner who committed the atrocity. More shocking is the fact that the perpetrator in the case of 6% of these girls in this age group was a relative. At least 4% said a friend or an acquaintance targeted them. Only 3% of the girls said a stranger subjected them to forced sex, while 0.4% said it was the father or the stepfather.Former Unicef consultant Suchithra Rao says incidents of girls being subjected to sexual violence rarely get reported. “We come to know if there is violence and police are informed. Even here, they see the light of day because of the health department’s role,” she explains.Indian girls, though, are in a better condition than their counterparts in Africa, Middle East, Eastern Europe, Pakistan and Nepal.