Pictured.....The mother aged 10 who had baby with her 13-year-old cousin

Parents-to-be: Elena Chiritescu with her 13-year-old boyfriend Gheorghe Mecic, during her pregnancy

It is the kind of innocent embrace you might expect from teenage sweethearts.
Wearing hooped earrings and with a flower in her hair, the girl drapes her arms around her ­boyfriend’s neck.
But that is where any resemblance to an ordinary young couple ends.
For this is Elena Chiritescu, the ten-year-old gipsy girl who became one of the world’s youngest mothers when she gave birth naturally to 6lb 6oz baby Nicoleta.
The picture was taken when she was three months pregnant. At her side is her 13-year-old cousin Gheorghe Mecic, the baby’s father. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the pair are no longer a couple.
Today the Daily Mail publishes these first pictures of the feckless parents and can exclusively reveal details of their doomed relationship, including how after she became pregnant aged nine, their mothers allowed them to live as ‘husband and wife’.
Elena and Gheorghe were raised as siblings by their grandmother in the Romanian capital of Bucharest after their mothers fled abroad to escape the grinding poverty.
Despite looking older than her years, officials have confirmed Elena was born in April 2000.
According to neighbours at her former home in a tower block in District 5, the poorest part of Bucharest, her father Valeriu died when she was five. ‘The family had a lot of debts so the mother, Olimpia, had to sell everything,’ said one who lived nearby. ‘She went to work in Spain picking strawberries a couple of years ago and left Elena with her grandmother.
‘She would come back from time to time but always returned to Spain for work. Last year Olimpia’s sister went to Spain as well for work and left Gheorghe with his grandmother.’

Elena with her mother Olimpia, right and Gheorghe's mother Florina, left

Abandoned, the children found solace in each other. When their relationship became sexual is unclear.
Relatives say their grandmother, Petra Tiberie, knew nothing of their relationship, although the baby was conceived in her tiny bungalow.
When the pregnancy finally came to light after Elena could no longer hide the physical signs, Olimpia was eager for the pair to stay together.
‘She let them live together as husband and wife,’ the relative said.
‘Elena was Gheorghe’s first girlfriend and the same for her.
‘The youngsters seemed to love each other and planned to bring the baby up together. But I don’t think either of them knows how to change a nappy.’ But he added: ‘Gipsy children grow up quickly. They don’t go to school so they look older than they actually are.’
With Elena’s due date nearing, her mother took her to Spain and it was there that Nicoleta Narcisa Chiritescu was born in a hospital in Jerez de la Frontera on October 26. Gheorghe stayed in Romania.
Mother and baby are now with relatives in a shabby three-storey block in the nearby town of ­Lebrija, where Olimpia said they were all ‘ecstatic’ and tried to play down the scandal.