Stepfather of young mother arrested for rape

The stepfather of Dafne, the young girl from Ixtlahuacan who gave birth in Guadalajara last month, has been arrested for rape after DNA tests proved he is the father of the baby.

Abundio Garcia Guadalupe, 44, was arrested late Tuesday night at his home in Tlaquepaque’s Francisco I. Madero neighborhood, Jalisco Attorney General Tomas Coronado revealed on Wednesday.

Medical examinations also indicate that Dafne is actually 12 or 13 years old – not nine, as her mother claimed last week. Dafne originally said the father of her child was her 17-year-old boyfriend, but Coronado revealed that she and Garcia had agreed upon this story so as not to upset her mother.

Garcia claims he had mutually consensual intercourse with Dafne in April and June last year, but even if such claims were true, Mexican law defines any sexual relationship with someone under the age of 15 as an act of child abuse.