Thirty girls dressed in lead polo shirts and brown pants hold some babies on a stand. The Casa del Padre shelter, located on the outskirts of Lima, in the Cieneguilla district, has organized a free concert by its children’s choir for the Christmas season and they are the big attraction. “In that home they are given a lot of love, protection and everything they need, since they have gone through very difficult situations,” says the promotional video. Those and got pregnant. The babies they carry in their arms are their children. “They will present us with beautiful choreography,” adds the spot.
Neither the video nor the photos are now available. They were deleted along with all Casa del Padre social networks. Its founder and vice president until a few years ago, congresswoman Milagros Jáuregui, is in the public eye for the dissemination of these images that various feminist groups consider re-victimizing. Jáuregui is an evangelical pastor who entered the political scene in 2021, when she obtained a seat in Congress, with number 2 of Renovación Popular, the ultra-conservative group led by the former mayor of Lima who today intends to be president, Rafael López Aliaga.
Jáuregui claims to be a defender of traditional values who has been restoring families for more than 30 years. On its website it is defined as “the voice of those who have no voice.” “The only reason I am in politics is to preserve the dignity of God’s creation made in the image and likeness of the father,” he said. Jáuregui is the president of the Women and Family Commission in Congress, and despite holding that position she has presented and ended the Ministry of Women and Vulnerable Populations.
Recently Jáuregui, also known as Milagros Aguayo because of her husband’s last name—with whom she has formed a clan of evangelical pastors along with their children—, told in a podcast that a decade ago she created this shelter where girls who have suffered sexual abuse come and continue their pregnancies there until they give birth. Their methodology aims to ensure that they do not see the child “as a curse” and that they understand that the baby “is the only victim.” “They have to be grateful for that child who is going to be born because, far from being the memory of pain, it will be a seal of hope,” he remarked.
Faced with the scandal, the politician seeking re-election to Parliament—this time to the Chamber of Deputies—as the number two of Renovación Popular, denies that he has exhibited the abused girls and that “the caviar mafia” is to blame for having leaked photographs that took place in a private setting, during a choir performance. In the last few hours, more images of pubescent girls with children in their arms have been spread in their shelter, on a stage, in the context of other events, where they do not look uniformed.
The National Human Rights Coordinator has issued a statement underlining that “child pregnancy is not an issue of ideologies”, that “sexual rape is a crime and should not be presented as a story of improvement” and that “therapeutic abortion has been legal in Peru since 1924, so denying this right when health is at risk is torture.” “The victims are the girls and the State has the obligation to protect them, not to force them into motherhood,” they add. The Casa del Padre shelter in Milagros Jáuregui has the support of the State. It is the Ministry of Women and Vulnerable Populations that directs abused girls to its headquarters.
According to the Ministry of Health, 993 girls under 14 years of age in Peru alone in 2025. Last month, the number exceeded 40 cases. In the middle of last year, the National Maternal Perinatal Institute modified its procedural guide for therapeutic abortion. The new directive reduced the cases to which this intervention can be applied from 15 to 11. Among them, the causes linked to damage to mental health in adolescents were removed. Who promoted the modification? Milagros Jáuregui. “Defending life from conception is not optional, it is a constitutional mandate,” he wrote in X.
Renovación Popular, his party, has distanced itself from Jáuregui. He has not removed her from his list for the general elections in April, but he has distanced himself. “We do not share or endorse what happened at an event organized by a congregation, where girls from a shelter were improperly exposed.” […] Under no circumstances can the suffering of minors be used for political, symbolic or public display purposes,” the letter says.
Although the case has split the group – several members of the group have shown their rejection – its leader has justified the fact: “It was a Christmas choir, it was a good action that should not have been made public. The girls were not exposed, their faces were covered.” His position finds roots in a statement from 2021, when he tried for the Presidency for the first time and proposed that raped girls carry their pregnancies in a “five-star hotel”, where they do not lack food and care and only then decide whether to give them up for adoption or not.
He podcast La Encerrona has reported that the Casa del Padre shelter has four disappearance alerts. One of them escaped from the shelter at the beginning of 2022. She left a letter where she reported the mistreatment of one of her guardians. “I can’t take it anymore. It’s terrible to feel rejected,” she says. In mid-2023 she was murdered. His body appeared in a farm, far from Lima. “That is precisely what is dangerous about ultra-conservative and religious ideas mixing with what should be a public shelter policy: places where adolescents can feel safe, accompanied and respected. She wanted to move to another shelter, but the management took time and she felt that her only option was to escape,” says Carlos Portugal, the journalist who covered the case.
“I will not resign, because I have not done anything wrong,” said Jáuregui. In addition to the shelter, he founded the Center for Family Development, where he gave training workshops. One of them was called “How to make your husband happy?” This Tuesday, the candidate for deputy Gahela Cari Contreras has filed a criminal complaint against Jáuregui and against all those who are responsible. In addition, a motion is being drafted for the evangelical pastor to be investigated by the Congressional Ethics Commission.
