PARIS\u00a0\u2014\u00a0A firestorm of recrimination raged in France on Friday over the feared killing of a missing 11-year-old girl, with the judicial system accused of having failed to act on previous allegations of rape against the suspect in custody.<\/p>\n
The search in southwest France for the girl identified by police as Lyhanna has gripped national and, increasingly, political attention since she went missing after school on May 29.<\/p>\n
Police notices said she\u2019d been wearing a black-and-white striped top, black shorts and yellow socks with branding from the Japanese manga series \u201cOne Piece.\u201d<\/p>\n
After six days of searching by police and volunteers, authorities announced that a child\u2019s body dressed in \u201csimilar clothes\u201d was found Thursday in an out-of-the-way location on a farm in the southwestern Gers region. An autopsy has been ordered. <\/p>\n
President Emmanuel Macron joined the outpouring of dismay, saying the case had revealed cracks in the system and that he was \u201cshocked.\u201d He spoke on a visit Friday to Montenegro, a departure from his habit of generally not commenting on domestic issues from overseas. <\/p>\n
\u201cThings didn\u2019t happen as they should have done. That is clear. And so it is unacceptable,\u201d Macron said. \u201cWe cannot look her family in the face and say everything went well.\u201d <\/p>\n
French media have reported that a 41-year-old man taken into custody was seen in front of Lyhanna\u2019s school in the Gers town of Fleurance and, on surveillance cameras, later spotted driving with her in his car. He told investigators that he dropped her off near the municipal swimming pool, media reports said.<\/p>\n
A Gers region prosecutor, Cl\u00e9mence Meyer, said this week that young girls and their families had previously lodged multiple complaints about the suspect, including allegations of rape.<\/p>\n
An allegation that the man raped a minor at his Gers region home in 2020 was looked into, with medical evaluations and police interviews, but authorities closed the case in 2024 for lack of evidence, the prosecutor said. <\/p>\n
The man was the subject of another, still ongoing police investigation over alleged rape when Lyhanna disappeared. The child in that case alleges that the suspect raped her repeatedly at his home in 2024 and 2025, the prosecutor said. That case has bounced between jurisdictions. <\/p>\n
She said another allegation of raping a minor was lodged against the man this week. <\/p>\n
The government has launched an investigation. Justice Minister Gerald Darmanin said officials will look at the time it took for casework to be transferred between jurisdictions, why information is transmitted on paper, not electronically, why police seemingly didn\u2019t follow orders and \u201cwhy we didn\u2019t intervene despite many months of complaints against the man.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s completely unacceptable,\u201d Darmanin said, speaking Thursday. \u201cWe are all terrified by this malfunction.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said it reveals \u201cour poor organization and without doubt, the fact that at the Justice Ministry and elsewhere, we don\u2019t take the words of children seriously.\u201d<\/p>\n
Leicester writes for the Associated Press. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PARIS\u00a0\u2014\u00a0A firestorm of recrimination raged in France on Friday over the feared killing of a missing 11-year-old girl,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31408,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[22639,8681,691,10463,22643,22645,5,22642,13180,22641,122,22640,5824,22644,4051,3693],"class_list":["post-31407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-france","tag-41-year-old-man","tag-authority","tag-case","tag-child","tag-crack","tag-custody","tag-france","tag-french-judicial-system","tag-girl","tag-lyhanna","tag-police","tag-previous-allegation","tag-rape","tag-school","tag-suspect","tag-week"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31407\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}