Decriminalizing Consensual Adolescent Relationships in Kenya

Summary

Summary

Kenya’s Sexual Offences Act (SOA) was enacted to protect children from sexual abuse, exploitation, and coercion. In practice, it has been misapplied to criminalize the very adolescents it was designed to protect. In Kenya, adolescents continue to be arrested, detained, prosecuted, and labeled as criminals for engaging in consensual, non-coercive, and non-exploitative sexual relations with their peers. Sections 8, 9, and 11 of the SOA and Section 43(4)(f) make no distinction between exploitative abuse and mutually consensual, non-coercive peer relationships between adolescents of similar ages.

As a result, adolescents have been prosecuted, despite the absence of coercion, exploitation, or harm. These prosecutions have been undertaken without regard to the best interests of the child, fair trial guarantees or the developmental and psychosocial realities of adolescence.

About the case and petitioners

About the case and petitioners

In August 2025, the Center for Reproductive Rights and its partner, the Reproductive Health Network Kenya (RHNK), filed a constitutional petition before the High Court of Kenya on behalf of three affected adolescents and the Network for Adolescent and Youth of Africa (NAYA), a youth-led organization.

The case challenges the constitutionality of the SOA provisions that expose adolescents to arrest, detention, stigmatization and imprisonment for consensual peer relationships. It also exposes the systemic failures that deny adolescents access to safe, confidential sexual and reproductive health (SRH) information and services, leaving them without support and pushing them into the criminal justice system.

These are not isolated cases. Thousands of adolescents across Kenya face the same fate: arrested for normal peer relationships, with no legal representation, and pushed through a criminal justice system that was never designed for them.

Three lives disrupted by criminal prosecution

HSO, 1st Petitioner – Makadara Criminal Case No. 34 of 2025

HSO, a 17-year-old boy, entered into a consensual peer relationship with CNK, a 16-year-old girl. Both come from vulnerable backgrounds and lack consistent caregiver support. Seeking safety and stability, they rented a room together and began building a life as a couple.

In February 2025, police raided their home, arrested them both, and detained them at Kasarani Police Station for three days. At the time of their arrest, CNK was found to be pregnant. HSO was charged with defilement and unable to raise the KES 50,000 for bail. He was held in police custody until NAYA intervened to secure his release.

AMO and TA, 2nd and 3rd Petitioners – Makadara Criminal Case No. E239 of 2023

In 2022, AMO and TA, who were both adolescents, began a consensual, non-exploitative, non-coercive relationship, which later resulted in pregnancy. When TA informed her family about the pregnancy, they orchestrated AMO’s arrest. AMO, age 17 at the time, was charged with defilement. TA was not charged, but she was listed as a witness against her own partner.

AMO was detained, released on bond, and spent years under the shadow of criminal prosecution. The charges were withdrawn in May 2025, only after it was confirmed he had been a minor at the time of his arrest.

The couple now lives together and are raising their two young children.

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