LIMA, Peru (AFP) – Peru’s President Dina Boluarte called Tuesday for the death penalty to be reintroduced for child rapists following the murder of a 12-year-old girl who is believed to have been sexually assaulted.

Peru’s first woman president, who has taken a tough stance on crime, said it was time to discuss the reinstatement of capital punishment, which was abolished in 1979.

“It is time that, faced with events of this magnitude, which should be inconceivable within a society, we propose drastic measures. It is time to open the debate on the death penalty for child rapists,” she said.

Police on Sunday found the body of the missing girl wrapped in blankets and rugs under the bed of her suspected killer in the impoverished Lima district of Villa Maria del Triunfo where she went missing a day earlier.

The authorities gave no further information about the victim or the suspect.

The Lima prosecutor’s office said Sunday it had opened an investigation for murder and rape of a minor.

“We cannot allow people like this to walk the streets freely,” said the president.

“We must not have any kind of consideration for those who dare to touch our children, who are the most sacred and untouchable for our Peruvian families,” Boluarte said.

Peru’s current law provides for punishment of life imprisonment for the rape of a minor under 14 years of age.

Bringing back the death penalty would be highly controversial and require changing the constitution.

Since 1995, Congress has rejected at least eight bills that sought to restore capital punishment.

Nearly three-quarters of all countries around the world have abolished the death penalty in law or in practice.