Hundreds of mourners gathered in Fleurance, a small town in southwestern France roughly 50 kilometres west of Toulouse, on Friday to bury Lyhanna, an 11-year-old girl whose murder two weeks ago has provoked a national reckoning over how France handles allegations of child sexual abuse. Pallbearers carried a small blue coffin into a sunlit cemetery as the town's mayor, Gregory Bobbato, spoke of his community's grief, praising the family's dignity and reminding those present that they were mourning not a symbol, but a child. Flags flew at half-mast at town halls across the wider Gers region, and flowers, candles and toys were placed at the foot of a cedar tree outside the school where Lyhanna was last seen alive.

The case turned from a horrific local crime into a national scandal when the scale of official failures surrounding the prime suspect, 41-year-old Jérôme Barella, became clear. Nine months before Lyhanna disappeared on 29 May, a 10-year-old girl named Rosa had reported repeated sexual abuse by Barella to police; a medical examination confirmed her account. Despite this — and despite Barella having already featured in three other sex abuse cases — investigators never once contacted him. Further compounding the failures, US authorities had alerted French police in 2023 to online activity suggesting Barella may have been accessing child sexual abuse material. The French National Office for Minors acknowledged receiving that signal but described it as