France has been convulsed by the murder of an 11-year-old girl whose alleged killer had been reported to police nine months ago as a suspected sex offender — and was never once questioned — sparking mass protests across the country and mounting pressure on the government to explain how the system failed so catastrophically.
More than 60,000 people took to the streets across France on Monday following the killing of Lyhanna, whose body was found at a farm approximately ten kilometres from the town of Fleurance in south-west France last Thursday. She had last been seen leaving school six days earlier. Jérome Barella, 41, the father of one of Lyhanna’s friends, was taken into custody three days after her disappearance. He has denied involvement in her death but has admitted driving her to a local swimming pool. When questioned by an investigating judge, he refused to answer any questions.
The public fury centres on a devastating failure by the justice system. In August last year, the mother of a ten-year-old girl named Rosa reported Barella to police, alleging he had sexually abused her daughter on multiple occasions. Medical evidence confirmed the abuse had taken place. Despite this, Barella was not questioned once in the nine months that followed. It has since emerged he had been named in several other alleged sexual abuse cases in recent years — information that should have made the Rosa complaint an urgent priority but did not.
In the eyes of an enraged French public, had investigators at least contacted Barella, he would have known he was under scrutiny, potentially preventing Lyhanna’s death. Rosa’s mother has now announced through her lawyers that she is filing a lawsuit against the state and against Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin personally.
Darmanin, a senior figure in President Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance party, acknowledged before a Senate committee on Tuesday that the case had revealed “shocking and unacceptable failings in the services of the state” but ruled out resignation. He rejected arguments that resource shortages were to blame for the failure to act. “What is missing in this story is not a new law; it’s not more money; it’s not better IT. It’s the need to prioritise allegations of rape,” he told senators. “The principle of precaution should have been applied to take Mr Barella out of circulation and determine whether the allegations against him were true. We had all the elements. Nine months later it is quite incomprehensible that he was never taken into custody.”
Darmanin has ordered state prosecutors to review approximately 70,000 complaints of sexual abuse against minors that are still awaiting treatment — a figure that itself speaks to the scale of the backlog gripping the French justice system.
The Higher Magistrature Council, representing France’s magistrates, pushed back against attempts to blame the judiciary, saying it “deplored the discredit being thrown on thousands of magistrates” and arguing the case was being “instrumentalised by people who have decided in advance that magistrates are the guilty parties.” It maintained that magistrates lacked the financial and manpower resources to carry out their work effectively — a claim Darmanin directly contradicted in his Senate appearance.
Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu has promised to strengthen child protection legislation currently passing through parliament, with proposals that would see serial rapists face potential life terms rather than the current maximum of 20 years.
