A protest outside the French Justice Ministry, Paris, on 29 June to demand a law against violence on minors, following the death of Lyhanna. The placard reads: ‘I believe you, I protect you’. Photograph: Julie Sebadelha/AFP/Getty Images View image in fullscreen A protest outside the French Justice Ministry, Paris, on 29 June to demand a law against violence on minors, following the death of Lyhanna. The placard reads: ‘I believe you, I protect you’. Photograph: Julie Sebadelha/AFP/Getty Images Opinion Europe How many more Lyhannas must there be before France takes child sexual assault seriously? Rokhaya Diallo The outrage following the 11-year-old girl’s killing is justified. But the case reveals a deeper systemic neglect of child protection
W hen the body of an 11-year-old girl was found in a disused grain silo on a farm in the Gers region of south-west France last month, the news sent shockwaves across the country . Lyhanna had been missing for nearly a week . Members of the public had been out combing the area. Suspicion quickly focused on Jérôme Barella, the 41-year-old father of one of Lyhanna’s classmates, in whose car Lyhanna had last been seen alive.
Barella was charged in connection with the case, but denies any wrongdoing or involvement in the killing. But shock turned to public outrage after a local prosecutor revealed that the suspect had been the subject of several accusations of sexual violence against young girls before Lyhanna’s disappearance, yet until then had never been questioned by police.
With the political fallout intensifying, the justice minister, Gérald Darmanin, has sought to focus attention on the failings of the judicial system, raising the possibility of magistrates being sacked, and ordering public prosecutors to review “every case involving children” – about 70,000 unsolved cases in total – by 14 July. My first reaction to that announcement was: why are 70,000 cases still awaiting review? Were they not considered urgent before this tragedy?
Of course, it is likely that serious mistakes were made throughout the handling of the Lyhanna case, as a preliminary inspection report has already indicated.
But the problem runs far deeper. France has one of the lowest ratios of public prosecutors in Europe: roughly 3.2 prosecutors per 100,000 inhabitants, nearly four times fewer than the average across the rest of Europe.
The track record of the French justice system in handling sexual violence is equally alarming. According to the Institute for Public Policy, roughly 92% to 94% of reported rape cases never led to prosecution. This reflects not only the evidentiary difficulties inherent in such cases, but also an overburdened justice system operating with too few investigators, too few prosecutors and too few resources to properly handle the volume of complaints it receives.
Read more For the small minority of cases that do move forward, justice often operates at a painfully slow pace. Years may elapse between the filing of a complaint and a final ruling, with criminal proceedings frequently taking years to conclude. Last year, the European court of human rights condemned France for failing to effectively protect victims of sexual violence, exposing serious shortcomings in both its legal framework and its handling of rape cases.
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