There are tragedies that do not only belong to those they strike. The death of Lyhanna, 11 years old, who disappeared on May 29, 2026 after leaving her school in Fleurance and found a few days later, is one of them.
It concerns us all, not out of voyeurism or compassion for the occasion, but because a society is judged by the way it protects its children. The emotion that upsets us is therefore legitimate, but it must be converted into action and with lucidity, so as not to be just another sob, soon to be covered by the next.
Lucidity requires us first of all to distinguish, among the accusations of laxity and the responses that come out, the bad ideas. Proposing a prosecutor’s office specializing in violence against women and children, based on the model of what exists for terrorism or organized crime, is an interesting idea, but the creation of this prosecutor’s office would have no real effect.
Do not confuse the failure of the system and the sanction of individuals
The specialization and centralization of files could certainly make it possible to identify risks of seriality, but we would then focus on the most serious files, neglecting everyday actions.
However, for the latter, adding an organizational layer would not make it possible, without a massive increase in resources, to process cases quickly. Proposing yet another “disciplinary court of the judiciary” where citizens chosen by lot would sit, by imposing it through a constitutional revision to bypass the Constitutional Council, falls under another register, much more demagogic.
This amounts to confusing the sanction of individuals with the failure of a system, to designating culprits where systemic causes should be identified, by weakening, on this occasion, the independence which constitutes the very value of a judge. However, it is not certain that we improve the protection of a child by intimidating the person who must guarantee it.
If individual faults and errors have been committed, they must be identified and punished, which no one disputes.
A complaint of rape against a 7-year-old child dismissed for “insufficiently characterized offense”; a procedure opened for months, without the accused having been heard, in particular due to a referral for lack of territorial jurisdiction; the transmission of a file by post with the risks and delays that this causes: these are shortcomings that must be examined.
The insufficient apprehension by the justice system of violence against minors
However, it would be a lie to consider them the sole cause of the more global dysfunction of this affair, as the latter reveals systemic flaws beyond individual errors. It would also be a lie to consider them an isolated anomaly, as this case demonstrates the insufficient apprehension by the justice system, and more broadly by society, of violence against minors.
It should in fact be remembered that almost three quarters of complaints for sexual violence against minors are dismissed. We then understand that the treatment of the initial complaint, in what is now called the Lyhanna affair, is not the exception: it is the symptom of a justice system which fails to respond to everything, which must make choices when it is ordered to deal with everything.
Contrary to what a previous Minister of Justice may have claimed, justice has not been repaired. It has only just been patched up, despite the additional resources allocated, significant resources but insufficient to make up for the delay that has been falling for decades.
The argument of means, which the President of the Republic believed he could dismiss, becomes again what it has never ceased to be: one of the causes of this failure of the system.
The Auch public prosecutor’s office too damaged to function properly
The Auch public prosecutor’s office, now singled out, did not fail by accident; it has been in a devastated state for too long to function properly today. Reduced, two years ago, to a single magistrate to represent the public prosecutor of an entire department, structurally undersized like many others, it has seen departures follow departures with late replacements.
However, everyone knows it on the ground: even when the positions are finally filled, those arriving must catch up with the stock, so that delay breeds delay. When it comes to child protection, however, protection means acting quickly, before the tragedy occurs.
Reducing the debate to just justice and its means would, however, be too narrow. The drama indeed highlights a more uncomfortable truth: despite repeated declarations of intent, child protection, which should be “at the heart of the next five years” (as Emmanuel Macron promised during the 2022 presidential campaign, Editor’s note), is still not, in our country, a real public policy.
Child protection should be at the heart of public policies
Violence at school or after school, the scourge of incest, the devastated state of child welfare, the examples are still numerous and they will continue to be so as long as child protection is not at the heart of all public policies.
We are still waiting for the most basic measures. For example, if women victims of domestic violence have had a protection order since 2010, the equivalent for the child, a safety order which would allow the judge to rule urgently, remains at the stage of a bill.
As if the child’s speech deserved less attention than that of the adult. Protecting children against violence and sexual abuse, guaranteeing vulnerable minors dignified reception and placement conditions, where their safety is guaranteed, providing them with quality education to prevent them from being caught up, for lack of anything better, by the criminal networks that thrive where the State retreats: these are not separate chapters.
It is a single requirement, which should ensure school, health, housing, justice and security for every child.
Protecting children and their future
The ordinance of February 2, 1945 on delinquent children opened with a conviction: “France does not have enough children for it to have the right to neglect everything that can make them healthy beings. »
Today, we could consider that France no longer has enough children to not provide itself with all the means to protect them. What was, in 1945, a matter of national recovery has become a question of the future, of a social project.
Child protection must be at the forefront of future debates, including, and perhaps especially, upcoming elections.
Not as the emotion of a moment, which the next news will erase, but as the criterion by which a social project, and especially its future, is measured. “Children are the future”, the phrase is so worn out that we almost forget to take it seriously. However, it must be understood literally.
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