It didn’t take long for Lyhanna’s tragic death to burst onto the political scene. The facts, it is true, are of such raw horror that it is enough to fuel immense anger. The 11-year-old girl was found lifeless on June 4 in the grain silo of an abandoned agricultural site. She disappeared outside the school, after getting into the car of the man who is now the main suspect. However, despite several alerts for rape of minors, he had never been heard by investigators.
This drama and the chain of dysfunctions that made it possible upset each of us in our most intimate areas. The politician is in his role when he takes note of this collective emotion, but responsibility requires us not to outbid ourselves. If there are individual faults, they must be punished. If they are structural failures, they need to be repaired. This fair share of responsibilities will only be appreciated with a little hindsight. This is the role of the investigation commissioned from the General Inspectorate of Justice, which will deliver its conclusions in a fortnight.
In the meantime, there would be nothing worse than calling into question all the magistrates, and thus further altering, through ignorance or calculation, the bond of trust between justice and litigants. Let us have the honesty to say it: yes, most judges take seriously the growing number of cases of sexual violence against minors that come before them; and no, they are not all lax, as evidenced by the increase in convictions. Let us also recognize that our level of demands towards them is inversely proportional to the resources we devote to them. If we really want to learn the lessons from this affair, we will have to pay the price by agreeing to cut other budgets. The murder of Lyhanna places us collectively before our responsibilities.
