France's Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin has instructed prosecutors to review some 70,000 outstanding child sexual abuse cases by 14 July, amid widespread backlash against the justice system's handling of the murder of a schoolgirl in recent weeks.
The 11-year-old schoolgirl, known in media reports as Lyhanna, went missing on 29 May in southwestern France and was discovered dead six days later. Amid an outpouring of grief, it emerged that authorities had failed to properly investigate her suspected killer, Jérôme Barella, over prior child sexual assault allegations.
Darmanin announced his plan on 8 June, stating that "not a single senior judge will go on holiday" — and nor would he — until he had met with "each and every one of the chief prosecutors" to take stock of the public situation. He set a 14 July deadline, giving prosecutors slightly more than five weeks to reach the target.
In practice, the 70,000 case threshold would mean reviewing around 14,000 cases per week on average — or more than 2,000 per working day.
The feasibility of this ambitious plan has been called into question in light of France's notoriously slow justice system, which has among the fewest professional judges in Europe, according to data from the Council of Europe.
