François Picard is pleased to welcome Solène Podevin-Favre, president of the "Face à l'inceste" advocacy and support group and former co-director of the Ciivise, an independent commission set up in 2021 to come up with proposals to fight sexual abuse of children in France. According to Podevin-Favre, the murder of 11-year-old Lyhanna is not an isolated tragedy. It is a "systemic failure" that has been repeatedly identified, documented and reported for years.
For our guest, the central problem is not a lack of evidence, expertise, recommendations or even financial solutions. The suspect in the murder of Lyhanna had been the subject of multiple complaints and investigations involving allegations of sexual abuse of minors, supported by medical evidence, dating back to at least 2017. And yet the French justice system never followed up.
The deeper issue is the persistent gap between knowledge and action in France. While child protection has become the subject of numerous reports, legislative proposals and public commitments, implementation remains fragmented and inadequate, she explains. Investigations are often under-resourced, professionals insufficiently trained and judicial responses constrained by institutional overload. As a result, warning signs accumulate while opportunities for intervention are missed.
Read moreFrench justice system on trial as nation rages at failure to prevent schoolgirl’s murder
For Podevin-Favre, the current crisis illustrates how failures across prevention, training, care and justice reinforce one another. When children are not interviewed according to established protocols, when complaints remain unexamined for years and when prosecutorial decisions are made under severe resource constraints, the system ceases to function as a protective mechanism.
The question is therefore not whether solutions exist. Podevin-Favre says we must ask ourselves why political systems repeatedly acknowledge these failures without undertaking the structural reforms necessary to prevent them. The growing public mobilisation reflects a broader demand for accountability and for a child protection framework that acts before tragedy occurs rather than responding after the fact.
