A Colombian dad has claimed he is the father of only one of his girlfriend’s triplets.
20-year-old Luis Daniel Torres, a member of northern Colombia’s indigenous Arhuaco group — along with most of the inhabitants of his village of San Pedro, located in the foothills of Santa Marta’s Sierra Nevada mountain range — believes that the three baby girls must have been fathered by three different men.
The young mother Glenis Zapata claims that the sexual relationship that resulted in the pregnancy was her first, “so I don’t understand how he can think that.”
Due to San Pedro’s remote location, the babies were born at home. Without having had an ultrasound, the birth of two more babies after the first was delivered was a shock to everyone, including the girl’s father who delivered them.
According to Ciro Francisco Zuleta, the local health centre pediatrician who attended to the babies some time after their birth; “This is happening because cases of multiple pregnancies have never happened in the Arhuaco ethnicity, so it’s more a case of ignorance than irresponsibility.”
As the mother is of mixed European and indigenous descent, while the father has only Arhuaco heritage, “the multiplicity comes from Glenis’ side”, the doctor added.
Two months on from the birth, the bewildered father still refuses to believe that all three children are his. According to local medical services, ongoing efforts are being made by the local doctor and the municipality’s indigenous health services to educate Torres in the biological background to multiple births, in the hope that he will eventually come to accept his daughters as his own.