The Guadalajara Reporter

'Nine-year-old' gives birth in Guadalajara

Jalisco authorities are investigating the case of a girl, supposedly just nine years old, who gave birth at a Guadalajara hospital last month.

 The young mother, identified only as Dafne, gave birth by cesarean section to a healthy girl weighing 2.7 kilos and measuring 50 centimeters at the Hospital General de Occidente in Zapopan on January 27.

“The girl was just over eight years old when she became pregnant. The father is 17, but we haven’t found him because he ran away,” said Dafne’s mother, who claims she was unaware her daughter was carrying a child for the first seven months of the pregnancy.

However, officials began to doubt the family’s version of events after they disappeared from their home in Ixtlahuacan de los Membrillos on Wednesday.

“Yesterday the minor was not at home, the medical and psychological team is there again today and she is still not at home,” Health Secretary Antonio Muñoz said on Thursday.

“The medical characteristics of this minor do not correspond to a nine-year-old girl,” Muñoz added. “She could be much older, she looks about 15 years old.”

The Jalisco Attorney General’s Office (PGJEJ) is now following two lines of investigation regarding the father of the child.

The first concerns Dafne’s 17-year-old boyfriend. According to her testimony, he fled once she told him that she was three months pregnant and then refused his offer to move in with him.

“We want to find the young man to hear his version of events,” said Jorge Villaseñor of the PGJEJ on Wednesday. “This is a case of rape or child sex abuse.”

The law in Mexico states that, even if consensual, any sexual relationship with someone under the age of 15 is considered child abuse.

Attorney General Tomas Coronado Olmos revealed the second line of investigation on Thursday, confirming that his office is investigating allegations by the family’s neighbors that Dafne’s stepfather is in fact the father of the child.

Dafne was discharged at the weekend, having been implanted with a subdermal contraceptive to prevent further pregnancies. She and her daughter are in good health but the hospital will continue to closely monitor their progress, providing the mother with any necessary psychological assistance.

“Given her age, her body was not fit or in the best condition to deliver a baby,” said Enrique Rabago Osorio, the hospital’s director, at a press conference on Wednesday.

Even if she is just nine years old, Dafne would not be the youngest mother to ever give birth in Mexico. In 1992, eight-year-old Zulma Guadalupe Morales gave birth to a boy by cesarean section in a Guadalajara hospital.

The youngest confirmed mother in medical history is Lina Medina from Peru, who was just five years and seven months old when she gave birth to a son in 1939.