Lina Medina

Lina Medina was born Lina Marcela Medina de Jurado on September 23, 1933 in Ticrapo, Peru. Her father Tiburelo Medina was a silversmith and her mother Victoria Losea was a homemaker. She had eight siblings.

When Lina was 5 years old, her parents noticed an abnormal abdominal swelling in her. Fearing it might be a tumor of some kind, her family was worried. However, the doctor’s diagnosis baffled everyone.

Initially, Dr. Gerardo Lozada diagnosed Lina as being seven months pregnant. He also took her to specialists and other fellow doctors to confirm. The diagnosis was an unusual one and Dr. Lozada immediately contacted the police.

The police first arrested Lina’s father suspecting incest and child abuse, but later released him due to lack of evidence. One of Lina’s siblings, who was mentally challenged, also came under scrutiny but there was no evidence implicating him as the child’s father.

Lina’s parents took a firm stand protecting the privacy of their child and rejected the offers of filming or using Lina’s condition for their financial gains. The family also revealed that Lina had started ovulating when she was just 8 months old and had started menstruating at the age of 3. She had started showing signs of development and had prominent breast development and widening of the pelvis at an early age.

Lina’s son Gerardo grew up believing she was his sister and found out at the age of 10 that she was in fact his mother. The biological father of the child has never been found to this day, with some suggesting that Lina herself might not know who the father was.

Gerardo grew up like a normal child and Dr. Lozada took Lina under his care and guidance and made sure she received proper education. He also made sure little Gerardo would receive all the help he needed and paid for his schooling as well. She worked as a secretary at the Lima clinic and assisted Dr. Lozada.

Later when she was 33, Lina married Raul Jurado and gave birth to their son named Raul Jurado Jr. in 1972. She turned down a number of interviews and offers to appear on shows, settling for a normal life instead. According to her husband, Raul Jurado, she also refused an interview with Reuters.

In 1979, Gerardo died from a bone marrow disease at the age of 40. There was no indication linking his infection to his unusual birth circumstance. Till then he had led a healthy and normal life.

Lina continues to live with her husband in Little Chicago, a poor district in Peru, and has led a life of poverty. She refuses to sell her story and revisit the past trauma and doesn’t find it right to make money.