Macron Says France’s Justice Dysfunction After 11-Year-Old Lyhanna Killed Near Fleurance

France is probing judicial “dysfunction” after the killing of 11-year-old Lyhanna, whose disappearance began on May 29 near the southwestern village of Fleurance and whose body was found in an abandoned silo on Thursday.

“The suspicion had been known to the authorities since at least 2017”

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President Emmanuel Macron said, “It is clear that there has been a dysfunction,” and he called it “unacceptable” while urging Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu’s government to investigate what had gone wrong at a cabinet meeting on Friday.

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Investigators found the body of a child wearing the same clothes as Lyhanna, and prosecutors confirmed it was the missing girl’s body following an autopsy.

The main suspect, a 41-year-old father of two, was detained as the key suspect, and the case has intensified after it emerged the suspect had twice been formally accused of raping a child with investigations either dropped or stalled.

Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin was, according to his team, to summon all public prosecutors in Paris on Monday morning as the investigation expands.

The case triggered a political firestorm in France, with Macron joining dismay and saying, “Things didn’t happen as they should have done. That is clear. And so it is unacceptable,” while he told the country he could not “look her family in the face and say everything went well.”

Justice Minister Gerald Darmanin said officials will look at “why we didn’t intervene despite many months of complaints against the man,” and he added, “We are all terrified by this malfunction.”

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Opposition figures framed the failures as systemic, with Jordan Bardella saying on X, “This terrible tragedy could have been avoided if the justice system were not so dysfunctional.”

Bruno Retailleau of Les Républicains argued that “Our justice system is a failure, it should be totally reformed,” while Marine Tondelier described the affair as a “symbol of a politico-judicial system incapable of handling the issue of sexist and sexual violence.”

As the investigation proceeds, prosecutors said DNA matching confirmed the body was Lyhanna’s, while Naboulet said more autopsy work is needed to determine the cause of death.

“Following the wave of emotion sparked by the kidnapping and death of Lyhanna, an 11-year-old, a storm of anger sweeps France's 'sieve justice' that lets pedocriminals go free, under the impassive gaze of politics, which is also on the dock”

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The government has launched an investigation into the judicial process, and Darmanin said officials will examine “why information is transmitted on paper, not electronically, why police seemingly didn’t follow orders” as well as the time taken for casework transfers between jurisdictions.

BBC reported that the 41-year-old man named as Jérome B has been in custody since Monday, and it said he was identified in four separate cases involving young girls, with two closed for lack of evidence and a third dismissed from his job as a maintenance worker for “inappropriate behaviour” toward a teenager.

The BBC also said the slowness of the French justice system was aggravated by the case having to be transferred from one jurisdiction to another, and it quoted Darmanin saying he was “terrified” by what had happened.

In parallel, France 24 reported that the main suspect had been formally accused of raping a child twice before, including a case dismissed in 2024 for lack of evidence, and a third case involving a girl born in 2014 was described by the prosecutor as filed on August 22, 2025.