Lyhanna: lawyer for murdered French girl’s family calls for more justice system funding

A lawyer for the family of an 11-year-old girl whose disappearance and murder sparked protests across France has called for more funding for the struggling justice system, amid a political row over the French state’s failure to tackle sexual violence against children.Lyhanna, 11, went missing on 29 May; her body was found a week later. Photograph: Family handout/AFP/Getty Images“Frankly, if the justice system had more resources, this tragedy and all the others wouldn’t have happened,” said the family’s lawyer, François Roujou de Boubée, on Tuesday. “The victim’s family and I trust in the justice system. So enough is enough.”Roujou de Boubée said the family of the girl, named only as Lyhanna, whose body was found in south-western France last week, did not want the government to use her murder for political reasons or to promise any new law or reform. Nor should the government be blaming investigators, he said.Lyhanna’s murder has pushed the issue of male violence against girls to the top of the agenda ahead of next year’s presidential election.Lyhanna went missing on 29 May near Fleurance, a small town of about 6,000 people 80km (50 miles) outside Toulouse. Her body was found seven days later in an out-of-use grain silo between two villages in the Gers area.She was last seen outside her school in the car of a 41-year-old man, Jérôme Barella, the father of one of her classmates. Barella, who was taken into custody before Lyhanna’s body was found, has denied killing her, telling police he had dropped her off at a local swimming pool.There was outrage in France when it emerged that Barella had been reported to police several times for the alleged rape of girls in recent years but had not been arrested. In August last year, he was reported to police for an alleged series of rapes of a 10-year-old girl, but nine months later, when Lyhanna went missing, he still had not been questioned by police. He had worked as a cleaner at several schools, and was fired from one for alleged inappropriate behaviour online with a female student.On Tuesday, the mother who reported Barella to police last year for the alleged rapes of her then 10-year-old daughter said she would now sue the state and the justice minister, Gérald Darmanin, over the failure to arrest and question the suspect.The woman, using only her first name, Audrey, claimed Barella had manipulated her daughter to prevent her speaking out. “He said to her, ‘if you tell anyone I’ll go to prison and kill myself’,” she said. Audrey said her daughter’s case was backed by medical and psychological examinations and the child had been interviewed by officers. “I tried to do my best but the justice system didn’t follow.”Audrey said she had called the police station every Monday morning to ask for updates but would always be told: “The investigation is ongoing.” Recently, she said, she had been told by one officer “that if I kept harassing them they’d sue me”. The interior minister, Laurent Nuñez, said call logs would be looked at to identify who had made that comment.Audrey’s lawyer, Pierre Debuisson, said the French justice system must become more “humane” and “things must change”. He said the majority of investigating magistrates in France were excellent but some were “catastrophic” and some investigators had been lazy.Francois Roujou de Boubée, the lawyer for Lyhanna’s family, said the government should not be blaming investigators, but the justice system should have more resources. Photograph: Valentine Chapuis/AFP/Getty ImagesDarmanin has refused to resign, while criticising what he called a “huge failure” in the handling of previous accusations against the suspect. He ordered 70,000 legal complaints for violence against children to be re-examined within the next month. But the lawyer for Lyhanna’s family said this was not credible, given the justice system’s lack of resources.Before a minute’s silence in parliament on Tuesday, the leader of the national assembly, Yaël Braun-Pivet, said: “France has collectively failed.” She said it was not a question of looking for “scapegoats” because “the problem is systemic”.Marine Le Pen, of the far-right National Rally party, said France “needed to reflect on the workings on the justice system”. Clémence Guetté, of the radical-left La France Insoumise, said the government must listen to campaigners and put “the necessary resources into the justice system, training and prevention”.The prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu, called a crisis meeting of ministers and said new legislation would be examined next month on dealing with all types of sexual and sexist abuse.More than a thousand people gathered outside the Toulouse courthouse on Monday evening. Photograph: Jean-Marc Haedrich/Sipa/ShutterstockTens of thousands of people protested outside the justice ministry in Paris and courtrooms across France on Monday night. Some in the crowd said they were survivors of childhood sexual violence and had suffered greatly over the slow handling of official complaints. “Our anger is against a system which does not reform, and against a government that won’t listen to us,” said Anne-Cécile Mailfert of the Women’s Foundation campaign group.In a letter to Darmanin, the head of one magistrates’ union, Ludovic Friat, said France’s judicial professionals could not respond to all requests from the ministry with “four times less prosecutors than the European average”.Only 7% of complaints of sexual assault of a minor in France result in a conviction, according to Ciivise, an independent commission on incest and sexual violence against children.The rally for Lyhanna on Monday evening in front of the courthouse in Paris denounced the inaction of the justice system over violence against women and children. Photograph: Apaydin Alain/ABACA/Shutterstock