"Fourteen-year-old Jatu stands on the stoop of her one room zinc-roofed shack watching chubby teenage schoolgirls pass by. They have neatly braided hair and green tunics and their black school shoes click against the dusty uneven road of New Kru Town, a slum community in Monrovia. Jatu's tank top scoops low across her breasts, which have been pumped up with the help of extra padding in what's known as an "iron-titty bra." Her skin-tight leggings slide down her lower back. As the girls pass, she turns her head to hide the scars carved into the left side of her face, neck and shoulders that have grown with her since she was mowed down by a taxi at the age of 8. The driver ran from the car and left her for dead. In recent weeks, the world's attention has been focused on the horrific kidnappingof more than 270 schoolgirls in a remote corner of Nigeria. It has been shocked by the death sentence handed down by a Sudanese sharia court against a woman who is eight months pregnant for the crime of 'apostasy.' But even in African nations that have adopted policies and laws aimed at empowering and protecting women and girls, violence against them remains a major challenge...Some women's rights activists say the culture of transactional underage sex is a sad legacy of Liberia's brutal 14-year civil war, which ended a decade ago, during which young girls became 'girlfriends' of men in various fighting factions to secure access to food and other material goods. Others argue the increasing number of girls hustling on the street is a result of growing economic hardship, combined with a culture that requires girls to do most of the domestic labor and support the household. The small West African nation remains one of the poorest in the world with over 50 percent of the population living in extreme poverty on less than 50 cents a day, according to the European Commission. But this assumption that girls should use their bodies to provide for the family has its roots in Liberia's patriarchal culture, which has a long history of fetishizing and abusing young girls who were in the past often married off to older men when they reached puberty, according to Korto Williams, country director of ActionAid an organization that has focused on promoting women's rights in Liberia...Under Liberia's rape law, sex with an underage prostitute is rape and a first-degree felony. Indeed, Liberia's rape laws, which came into effect in 2006, classify sex with anyone under the age of 18 by anyone over the age of 18 as rape if there is more than a two-year age gap. The punishment on the books is life imprisonment, although this is rarely enforced. Prostitution also is illegal...despite these efforts, the court has only completed 18 trials in the past four years, with just a handful of convictions. In 2012 only five trials were completed, and 93 percent of the cases were dismissed."