Fury in France after child murder suspect’s criminal record released
There is anger in France over the murder of an 11-year-old girl after it was revealed that the prime suspect had been a potential child molester several times in the past.
Lyhanna disappeared after school a week ago in the Gers region of southwestern France. A body presumed to be his was found on farmland near the town of Fleurance on Thursday.
A 41-year-old man named Jérome B. has been detained since Monday. He is the father of a friend of Lyhanna’s, and two witnesses said they saw the girl in his car the afternoon she disappeared.
Amid the shock and pain, the incident took a political turn when details of Jérome B.’s police records were released by the authorities.
He has been named in four separate cases involving young girls in recent years. Two of these were closed for lack of evidence, and in the third, he was dismissed from his job as a maintenance worker at a secondary school for “inappropriate behavior” towards a teenager.
However, the fourth incident lit the fuse that led to the highest levels of the justice system.
According to the prosecutor in the town of Auch, Jérome B. was the target of a complaint last August from 10-year-old Rosa, who said her mother had raped her several times.
But shockingly, although a medical examination confirmed Rosa’s claims, Jérome B. had not been questioned by investigators even once in the nine months since his family went to the police.
The slowness of the French justice system is legendary. Delays in this case were further aggravated by the fact that the case had to be transferred from one jurisdiction to another.
But the French were dismayed that none of the various alarm signals about Jérome B. were heeded by the authorities, who were more interested in following procedure than in putting him beyond his capacity to do harm.
With Presidential elections are less than a year awayThis incident was seized upon by prospective candidates as evidence of laxity, incompetence and underinvestment.
“The French people demand a reckoning,” far-right National Rally Chairman Jordan Bardella said on X. “This terrible tragedy could have been prevented if the justice system had not been so dysfunctional.”
“Our justice system is a failure, it must be completely reformed,” said Bruno Retailleau of the conservative Les Républicains. “A society that cannot protect its own children is a society that will one day begin to turn against itself.”
On the left, Marine Tondelier, an ecologist, said the incident was “symbolic of a political-judicial system incapable of addressing the issue of sexist and sexual violence.”
President Emmanuel Macron said it was “clear” there were some failures. “This is unacceptable. We can’t look at Lyhanna’s family and say this was handled properly.”
Justice Minister Gerald Darmanin said he was “horrified” by what happened.
“It’s fair to ask why a man who was so clearly the subject of suspicion was not kept away from young people… Why has no one taken action even though there have been complaints about him for months?”
The Prime Minister demanded a report on what went wrong within 15 days.
