Lyhanna disappearance: suspect faced three prior sex-crime complaints, government orders administrative inquiry

The disappearance

Lyhanna, an 11-year-old schoolgirl, was last seen on Friday afternoon getting into a car outside her school in Fleurance, in the Gers department of southwestern France. By Thursday, the search had entered its seventh day with 170 gendarmes still deployed, using what authorities describe as growing human and technical resources. No trace of the girl has been found.

The suspect's judicial history

Jérôme Barella, a 41-year-old father, has been placed under formal investigation for kidnapping and sequestration and is being held in provisional detention. At a press conference on Wednesday, Auch prosecutor Clémence Meyer revealed that Barella was already the subject of three separate proceedings for rape or sexual assault at the time of Lyhanna's disappearance.

The first was a judicial report filed in 2017 by the mother of a 17-year-old girl who had been in a relationship with Barella, then 32. The case was closed without action in February 2018 because the girl was above the age of consent and no offence could be recorded. In 2020, Barella was dismissed from his job as a maintenance worker at the Maréchal-Lannes high school in the Gers over an inappropriate relationship with a female student. The school contacted the gendarmerie two days after Lyhanna disappeared, but the Auch prosecutor's office said it had not yet identified any judicial follow-up to that incident.

A rape complaint was filed in 2022 concerning acts allegedly committed on a seven-year-old child in 2020 at Barella's home. Medical examinations, gynaecological tests and witness statements did not sufficiently support the allegations, and the case was closed in 2024 on the grounds that the offence was insufficiently characterised. Meyer said that case will now be re-examined.

The 2025 complaint and the administrative inquiry

A second rape complaint was lodged on 22 August 2025 by the mother of a girl born in 2014, alleging rapes committed at Barella's home in Montestruc-sur-Gers. Because the alleged acts took place in the Gers, the Toulouse prosecutor's office transferred the file to Auch, which received it in December and only forwarded it to the Fleurance gendarmerie in January. Nine months after the complaint was filed, Barella had still not been questioned.

Interior Minister Laurent Nunez told the National Assembly on Wednesday that he and the justice minister had decided to launch an administrative inquiry, to be handled by the General Inspectorate of Justice and the General Inspectorate of the National Gendarmerie, into possible dysfunctions in the handling of the suspect's prior cases. The inquiry specifically covers the treatment of the 2025 complaint.

We have decided to launch an administrative inquiry, which will be entrusted to the General Inspectorate of Justice and the General Inspectorate of the National Gendarmerie, to identify any possible dysfunctions.

A new complaint and fresh testimony

On Wednesday, a new complaint for sexual assault was filed against Barella. Nicolas L., the father of a girl placed in the care of the child welfare services (Aide sociale à l'enfance), told BFMTV that his daughter had described inappropriate touching by Barella during a sleepover at his home in Montestruc-sur-Gers in August 2025. He said the girl's social worker had filed a report in March 2026, and that he contacted the police himself after learning Barella was the suspect in Lyhanna's disappearance.

There were caresses on the buttocks and he had his hand on a wall to talk to her up close. And supposedly they went into a pool and when she got out of the water he touched my daughter's buttocks.

Judicial resources under scrutiny

Magistrates' unions have pointed to chronic understaffing as a factor in the delays. Aurélien Martini, deputy general secretary of the Union syndicale des magistrats, told franceinfo that France has four times fewer prosecutors than the European average. He said investigators in the juvenile sections he knows carry 300 to 350 cases each, and that many prosecutor's offices still work with paper files.

There are dysfunctional delays because there are four times fewer prosecutors in France than in Europe.

Manon Lefebvre, national secretary of the Syndicat de la magistrature and a deputy prosecutor, said the processing time for the 2025 complaint was not surprising given the caseload. She noted that on some days multiple rapes are reported and investigators must simultaneously find protective placements for minors and question both victims and suspects.

At the moment, sexual violence against minors is not a priority. In any case, we are not given the means for it to really be one.

The family's response

Lyhanna's parents issued a statement through their lawyer, François Roujou de Boubée, saying they had learned of the August 2025 criminal proceedings from media reports. They remain in the greatest anxiety, called for their privacy to be respected, and expressed faith in the justice system.