France orders review of 70,000 child violence complaints after outrage

France’s justice minister ordered prosecutors to re-examine 70,000 ongoing complaints of violence against minors, an extraordinary move that turned the killing of 11-year-old Lyhanna into a national reckoning over how the state handles warnings of child abuse. Gérald Darmanin said the cases should be treated as an absolute priority and reviewed by July 14, after public outrage over earlier allegations that were not acted on against the man suspected in the girl’s death.

The scale of the review points to a system under pressure well beyond one horrific case. Darmanin said he would take responsibility if failings were identified and said disciplinary action could range from a reprimand to dismissal. He called the episode a terrible failure by the state and the justice system, framing the review not as a routine audit but as a test of whether France can respond faster when children are at risk.

Lyhanna, whose body was found on June 5 after she went missing on May 29 near Fleurance in southwestern France, became the face of that failure. President Emmanuel Macron called the handling of the case an “unacceptable” failure and said there had been a “dysfunction” in the judicial system. A silent march in Lyhanna’s memory drew about 6,000 people in Fleurance on June 7, according to local authorities, with her parents joining the procession.

The case has intensified scrutiny of the suspect’s history as well. He had previously faced multiple allegations, including accusations of rape and sexual assault against children, but had never been convicted. That backdrop has sharpened questions over whether repeated warnings were lost in the system, and whether earlier intervention might have prevented Lyhanna’s death.

Beyond the courtroom, the episode has exposed a staffing problem that officials can no longer ignore. France has around three prosecutors per 100,000 inhabitants, compared with a European average of 12.2, a gap that helps explain how child-violence complaints can pile up while cases move slowly. Lawmakers from across the political spectrum have seized on the scandal to argue that the problem is structural, not just a matter of individual negligence.

The review now under way is intended to reset how child violence complaints are handled nationwide. But with tens of thousands of cases pending, and a public already shaken by missed warnings in Lyhanna’s case, the deeper question is why it took a public scandal to force a reckoning with a backlog of this size.