9-year-old raped by her 43-year-old father gives birth in Peru

A nine-year-old girl who was raped by her father has given birth at a hospital in Peru.

The child had reportedly been abused since the age of eight by her 43-year-old father, Mario Mamani Vilca.

Her pregnancy was only discovered after five months, when her mother noticed that her stomach had swollen.

The late discovery meant that the girl could not have an abortion. She gave birth last Monday (22 January) at the Hipolito Unanue Hospital in Tacna, southern Peru, local broadcaster RPP reported.

Her baby girl is healthy and weighs 3.3kg, hospital director Claudio Ramírez said.

Since her pregnancy was revealed in November, the girl has been looked after by a group of missionaries at the Angelica Recharte shelter in Tacna.

The girl's mother lost custody of her as she reportedly knew about the sexual abuse but refused to make a formal complaint against her husband.

The hospital said the girl would receive intensive therapy to deal with the birth and prevent her from rejecting her daughter.

Vilca, who has been dubbed "the monster" by the Peruvian press, is being held at the La Capilla de Juliaca jail as prosecutors gather evidence against him.

The child rape was not an isolated incident in Tacna. Since December 2016, police have been hunting Raúl Huallpa Gómez who allegedly had been raping his goddaughter from when she was 11 years old. The girl got pregnant at 13.

Gómez is on the police's 'most wanted list' of fugitives and has a £4,000 bounty on his head.