RESEARCH ARTICLE Forced sexual intercourse and its association with HIV status among people attending HIV Voluntary Counseling and Testing in a healthcare center in Kinshasa (DRC) Eduardo Burgueño 1,2☯ , Silvia Carlos 3,4,5☯ *, Cristina Lopez-Del Burgo 3,4,5 , Alfonso Osorio 4,5,6 , Maria Stozek 5 , Adolphe Ndarabu 7 , Phile ´ mon Muamba 8 , Philomene Tshisuaka 9 , Jokin De Irala 3,4,5 1 CEFA-Monkole, Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo, 2 School of Medicine, University of Mwene- Ditu, Mwene-Ditu, Democratic Republic of the Congo, 3 Preventive Medicine and Public Health Department, University of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain, 4 IdiSNA, Navarra Institute for Health Research, Pamplona, Spain, 5 Institute for Culture and Society (ICS), University of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain, 6 School of Education and Psychology, University of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain, 7 Monkole Hospital, Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo, 8 School of Law and Politics, Catholic University of Congo, Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo, 9 ISSI-Monkole Nursing School, Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo ☯ These authors contributed equally to this work. * scarlos@unav.es Abstract Introduction Sexual violence, an HIV determinant, is an integrated behavior in the D.R.Congo. We aimed to analyze the prevalence of forced sexual intercourse (FSI) among people receiving HIV Voluntary Counseling and Testing in a hospital in Kinshasa, and its association with socio- demographics, behaviors and HIV status. Methodology Case-control study (2010–2012). Two-hundred and seventy-four cases with a new HIV+ test and 1,340 controls with an HIV- test were interviewed about HIV-related knowledge, attitudes and behaviors, including FSI. Results Thirty-four percent of the participants declared having had FSI (38% of women and 32% of men). Being a woman, aged 25–49 and reporting multiple sexual partners were associated with reporting FSI. For men, being single was protective against FSI; and cohabiting, having a high socioeconomic status, and alcohol consumption increased the odds. For women, being single, divorced/separated and widow was associated with reporting FSI. A significant positive association was found between FSI and an HIV posi- tive test. PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0189632 December 18, 2017 1 / 15 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 OPEN ACCESS Citation: Burgueño E, Carlos S, Lopez-Del Burgo C, Osorio A, Stozek M, Ndarabu A, et al. (2017) Forced sexual intercourse and its association with HIV status among people attending HIV Voluntary Counseling and Testing in a healthcare center in Kinshasa (DRC). PLoS ONE 12(12): e0189632. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0189632 Editor: Andrew R. Dalby, University of Westminster, UNITED KINGDOM Received: August 2, 2017 Accepted: November 29, 2017 Published: December 18, 2017 Copyright: © 2017 Burgueño et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Data Availability Statement: Data are available from Harvard Dataverse (doi:10.7910/DVN/ QHGRNH). Funding: This work was supported by the University of Navarra (PIUNA 12458071). Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.