‘Nine-year-old’ mother ‘could be 15,’ Jalisco officials say

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.

Dafne was just over eight years old when she became pregnant, according to her mother, but 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 looking into allegations by the family’s neighbors that Dafne’s stepfather is in fact the father of the child.