“Stop to impunity”, “never again”, “slow justice, stolen childhood”: these were among the protest banners held up by more than 60,000 people who marched in rallies across France this week in an eruption of anger at perceived failures to prosecute crimes of abuse.
The outcry was spurred by the murder of an 11-year-old girl, Lyhanna, whose body was discovered on a farm in southwest France last week, six days after she had been reported missing.
It subsequently emerged that the main suspect in her murder, who is now in custody, had repeatedly been accused of the sexual abuse of minors but was never questioned or charged.
The uproar has put the French government under political pressure, with the justice minister and interior minister questioned in the senate over the apparent failures that led to the suspect being left at large.
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Another 11-year-old girl, Rosa, filed a rape complaint against the same man in August 2025 and had been interviewed and medically examined. The man had not yet been questioned, arrested or taken into custody by the time of Lyhanna’s death.
On Tuesday, Rosa’s mother told French media that she would be taking the state to court for “gross negligence” and pursuing criminal charges against the judicial officials who worked on her daughter’s case.
“Nothing was done. The justice system didn’t do its job. Why did we have to wait a year? Why wait until Lyhanna died?” she told French media.
“I called every Monday morning, and I was always told that the case was being processed. But the case wasn’t being processed,” she continued.
“It could have been my daughter, she could have died.”
Justice minister Gérald Darmanin told the senate that there were delays because the case was transferred from one prosecutor’s office to another and because files were sent by physical mail.
He has also suggested there may be more “structural” problems.
“What we lacked in this case was the prioritisation of rape complaints,” he told the senate.
“We had the evidence, and that’s what makes me so angry.”
The suspect was previously accused of the sexual assault of a 17-year-old, and dismissed from a job at a high school in 2020 after being accused of inappropriate behaviour, according to French media. A separate accusation of rape in 2022 was dismissed.
The case has placed the French justice system under renewed scrutiny and has become a highly charged political issue in advance of presidential elections due to be held in 2027.
French president Emmanuel Macron described the case as “unacceptable”.
The government announced plans to toughen sentences and force investigations to take no longer than three months as it scrambles to contain the outcry.
Darmanin has resisted calls to resign as justice minister, issuing a public apology to Lyhanna’s family and ordering French prosecutors to review some 70,000 pending complaints involve child victims before July 14th.
A union representing French magistrates has pushed back against this, saying that the system is understaffed and prosecutors are overburdened with cases, suggesting the justice minister is seeking to shift the blame.
According to CIIVISE, an independent commission of inquiry into child abuse, three out of four complaints of sexual abuse against minors are dropped after a preliminary investigation, and only about 7 per cent result in a conviction.
A statement by a group of 150 organisations united under women’s rights group Fondation des Femmes said they were fighting a “battle against impunity” and a “battle against a system that protects perpetrators more than victims”.
“Lyhanna’s death represents one injustice too many ... Lyhanna didn’t die because we didn’t know what to do. Lyhanna died because we refused to do what was necessary.”
