After the ordeal experienced by the young schoolgirl Lyhanna, who seized the country, France Victimes is calling for a national Grenelle meeting for childhood victims. On one condition: that it does not remain without a solution, without societal commitment, and without concrete and immediate action.
This tragedy obliges us and calls us to give substance to the following principle: “Victims never again alone”. There are disappearances that shock our country, the face of an eleven-year-old child is one of them.
The emotion is immense. She’s legit. Faced with such a context, the time has come for general mobilization, all those involved in the protection and support of child victims must come together around a Grenelle meeting on crimes committed against minors.
The numbers are overwhelming
The figures are overwhelming and they must be remembered. In 2025, the police and gendarmerie services recorded 114,500 minors victims of physical violence and 76,200 victims of sexual violence, according to statistics from the Ministry of the Interior.
The Independent Commission on Incest and Sexual Violence Against Children (Ciivise) estimates that 160,000 children are victims of sexual violence each year, and that 5.4 million adults have suffered from it since childhood. The cost of this child crime is estimated at nearly ten billion euros per year.
Make no mistake. France has no shortage of texts: Taquet Law, law of March 2024 on child victims of domestic violence, eighty-two recommendations from Ciivise, work of a parliamentary commission of inquiry, proposals and bills, circulars.
The need for a coordinated response
The diagnosis is made. The solutions are known. What is missing is the movement of everyone, in a coordinated, fluid, effective and efficient manner.
Our public response remains fragmented between ministries which act in silos, overwhelmed departments, child welfare which is crumbling, an overwhelmed justice system, associations which help victims are exhausted.
This is why France Victimes, which brings together 130 local victim support associations, is calling for a Grenelle meeting on crimes committed against minors: murder, rape, acts of torture and barbarity, kidnapping and sequestration, cyberpedocrime. In a context where it is imperative to demonstrate responsibility, independent monitoring that is publicly accountable year after year is essential.
Four prior commitments
This requires four prior non-negotiable commitments:
– Coordinated mobilization of all stakeholders around the table: the State, justice, health, social affairs, law enforcement, national education, departments, municipalities, associations, without blind spots.
– The implementation of all proposals aimed at identifying, protecting and supporting child victims.
– Respect for the child’s words, and systematic identification of violence.
– A dedicated, defined and concerted, multi-year, secured budget, announced from day one.
The need for suitable places
The child’s words must be heard in such a way as to secure their testimony and to become a method of proof, likely to confuse the perpetrators of offenses.
This means that perfectly adapted places are needed, of which the development of pediatric reception units for children in danger (UAPED) and Mélanie rooms, adapted spaces allowing the voices of young victims or witnesses of sexual assault to be heard in a reassuring and as secure environment as possible, appears to be the most appropriate.
They still need to be able to be generalized across the entire metropolitan and overseas territory, and operate every day of the week, including in emergencies, in order to allow immediate listening to the stories of child victims.
It is also necessary that the assessments can be carried out by forensic doctors and pediatricians so that the evidence is definitively established and made available to investigators and prosecutors.
Strengthen support
We need to work on the way in which we welcome and collect the words of children but, even more, in the long term, strengthen their support. It is therefore imperative to immediately implement personalized assessments of the situation of minor victims (EVVI) and their needs, as well as the requirements for their protection.
Just as it is essential that upon each revelation, the appointment of an ad hoc administrator be immediately considered so that the minor victim benefits from the latter’s protection.
But above all, the identification of this violence by primary healthcare professionals must be included in a recommendation from the High Authority for Health. It is therefore an interministerial vision that must be promoted.
Transforming outrage into public policy
It is our job to hear the child’s words. Every day, in our victim support associations, we support child victims and their loved ones. Protecting child victims does not just mean punishing: it means identifying, judging without delay, treating the trauma, rebuilding.
The Republic has already been able to transform indignation into public policy. She owes it, this time, to her children. Let a Grenelle of childhood victims not be another ceremony. Let it be a commitment. And we don’t have to write this column anymore.
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