Who was Lina Medina? Youngest mom in history was 5 YEARS OLD when she was raped
Lina Medina, a girl from a remote mountain village in Peru, is the youngest mother recorded in human history. At the age of five, Medina was raped by a man whose identity is still unknown. On May 14, 1939, she gave birth to a baby boy via cesarean. Her pelvis was too small for a natural birth.
When Medina complained about being in pain in 1933, her mother noticed that her stomach was growing. While doctors initially feared that the growing stomach was the result of a tumor, it was soon discovered that she had been pregnant for as many as seven months. Medina suffered from a condition called precocious puberty and had mature sex organs. Her mother noticed that she began menstruating at the age of three, and by the age of four, her breasts were almost fully developed. Conflicting her mother's claims, however, a medical report from Peru said that Medina started having her periods when she was just eight months old.
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Medina's baby was born a healthy 6lbs. He was named Gerardo in honor of the doctor who performed the surgery. Gerardo died aged 40 in 1979 after suffering from a bone disease.
Medina's father was initially arrested as a suspect but later released due to lack of evidence. There are studies that claim that female children who are sexually abused are likely to go through puberty faster than others. As a result of such abuse, precocious puberty might even get accelerated.
According to doctors, Medina was impregnated when she was four years old. Writing about the case in a medical journal, Dr Edmundo Escomel said that Medina “couldn’t give precise responses” when she was asked about the baby's father. It is possible that she did not know who impregnated her, considering her young age. Tiburelo, her father, who worked as a silversmith, maintained that he never raped his daughter.
The Peruvian government reportedly promised financial help to Medina's family when the case made headlines, but the support never really came. In a book by author Jose Sandoval, he wrote, "The government condemned them to live in poverty. In any other country, they would be the objects of special care."
