© picture alliance / NurPhoto | Samuel Boivin
The death of 11-year-old Lyhanna in France will not have been in vain: the French court will speed up 70,000 files on violence against children.
The search for 11-year-old Lyhanna, who had been missing for almost a week, came to an end late last week: her body was found in an abandoned grain silo in the Gers department in southwestern France.
The girl disappeared while leaving school in Fleurance, a commune of just over 6,000 people in the Gers department. She was last seen getting into a man's car. A 41-year-old man, Jerome Barella, the father of a friend of the missing girl, was soon arrested and detained. He is charged with kidnapping and deprivation of liberty. He continues to deny any role in the girl's disappearance and death, even though all evidence appears to point in his direction.
The case provoked a great deal of uproar and outrage in France. Jerome Barella appeared to have come into contact with French justice in the past: in 2022, he was previously charged with raping an underage girl, but that case was dismissed for lack of evidence. In a second complaint, from August 2025, he had not even been questioned. In addition, there were numerous reports of "inappropriate behavior" toward minors.
According to the Auch prosecutor's office, on Monday, Jerome Barella's brother, 44, was also remanded in custody "on suspicion of rape of a minor over the age of 15, rape of his ex-partner, kidnapping and repeated death threats against his ex-partner". The facts took place between 2007 and 2017.
At a memorial march last Sunday, the mayor of Fleurance declared that "as elected representatives, as a nation and as people, we have failed in our most important mission: to protect children".
According to the Interior Ministry, 60,400 people took to the streets on Monday to protest the failures of justice in the Lyhanna case and, more generally, the handling of sexual violence.
The French government of Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu wants to amend a bill to protect children with additional measures. A first measure is to adjust the penalty for rapes involving multiple victims: the currently applicable sentence of 20 years should be increased to life in prison. A second measure concerns investigative acts: they should henceforth be carried out within a maximum period of three months.
Picture: © picture alliance / NurPhoto | Samuel Boivin