French PM convenes emergency meeting after body of missing girl found; judicial failures under scrutiny
French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu summoned the interior and justice ministers on Friday to address the case of 11-year-old Lyhanna, whose body was found in an abandoned silo near Fleurance on Thursday after she went missing on May 29. The suspect, a 41-year-old father of a classmate, had been the subject of three prior sexual assault complaints that were either dropped or stalled. The case has sparked nationwide outcry over judicial missteps and missed opportunities to intervene.
French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu convened a cabinet meeting on Friday, June 5, 2026, summoning the interior and justice ministers to address the case of 11-year-old Lyhanna, whose body was found in an abandoned silo near Fleurance on Thursday, June 4. The girl, identified only by her first name, went missing on May 29 after she was last seen getting into a man's car when she left her middle school in the southwestern town of Fleurance. Investigators found the body of a child wearing the same clothes as Lyhanna in the silo; formal identification is under way.
The key suspect is a 41-year-old father of two whose daughter was a school friend of Lyhanna. He had been formally accused of raping a child in two previous cases, but the investigations were either dropped or stalled. Prosecutor Clemence Meyer detailed the prior complaints: a December 2017 complaint about a relationship with a 17-year-old was dropped in 2018 after the girl said she had consented; a January 2022 complaint of raping a child under 15 was dismissed in 2024 for lack of evidence; and a third complaint on August 22, 2025, accused the suspect of raping a girl born in 2014 between September 2024 and May 2025. Police had not questioned the suspect when Lyhanna disappeared nine months after the third complaint.
Justice Minister Gerald Darmanin said all were "terrified by this malfunction" and plans to convene all public prosecutors in Paris on Monday morning. Fleurance mayor Gregory Bobbato said: "There is a deep dysfunction in investigations and in the way they are conducted." Anne-Cecile Mailfert of the Women's Foundation said: "The system doesn't work."