DUTCH POLICE HAVE arrested the 52-year-old father of a 12-year-old child who gave birth on a school trip last month.

The 12-year-old and her healthy baby daughter were taken into foster care after the birth. The schoolgirl had not known she was pregnant.

Prosecutors have “serious suspicions” that the man abused his daughter.

Prosecutor’s office spokeswoman Kirsten Smit that following DNA testing,  scientists had concluded that there was a “considerable” chance he was the father. It was difficult to determine definitely, she said, as the 12-year-old and her father were closely related and so genetically very similar.

“There are a lot of similarities between the father and his daughter and you also find those in the baby. That is why it is hard to see what is from him and what is from the mother,” said Smit. “But there are things missing from the mother that have been passed on by the father. That is why we say the chance is considerable, we can’t be 100 per cent sure.”

Neither the girl not the father were identified.

- Additional reporting by AP