Rape victim jailed for 30 years over ‘stillbirth’

A TEENAGE rape victim in El Salvador has been jailed for 30 years for aggravated homicide after delivering what may have been a stillborn baby in a lavatory.

A court ruling said Evelyn Cruz, 19, killed her baby at her home in Cuscatlán.

Her lawyers and women’s rights campaigners said she had been raped, did not know she was pregnant, and there was no evidence the student had deliberately caused the death of the child. Miss Cruz gave birth on April 6 before being taken to hospital to be treated for a haemorrhage. Police found the baby dead inside the house’s septic tank.

Sara García, of El Salvador’s Feminist Collective, said the decision was not unusual, citing dozens of cases in which courts have blamed women for having miscarriages in a country where 25,000 pregnancies are caused by rape each year, and abortion is illegal.