France’s justice minister refuses to resign over lapses in girl killing case

France's Justice minister Gerald Darmanin leaves the weekly cabinet meeting at the Elysee Palace in Paris. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)

Warning: Graphic content.

France’s justice minister Monday refused to resign after outrage erupted over judicial lapses in the handling of the suspect in an 11-year-old girl’s killing.

The body of the girl, named as Lyhanna, was found last week after she went missing on May 29 near the southwestern town of Fleurance.

Justice Minister Gerald Darmanin apologised on Friday for what he called a “huge failure” in the handling of previous accusations against the suspect.

The 41-year-old man, the father of a school friend of the victim, had twice before been formally accused of raping a child.

• READ MORE: Death of an 11-year-old in France exposes cracks in the judicial system
• READ MORE: Outrage in France as body found in missing girl case

A legal complaint was filed in August last year, but the investigation stalled and police had not yet questioned him by the time Lyhanna went missing nine months later.

Darmanin said he had ordered the country’s public prosecutors to re-examine the 70,000 legal complaints under review across France for alleged crimes against children.

“The question of my remaining (in government) would arise only if I were not taking responsibility,” he told a news conference, responding to a journalist’s question.

“Is the Lyhanna case a one-off failure?” he asked. “Or is it that, in a more systemic way, there are many more cases like this?

“I will tell the whole truth without hiding anything from the French people.”

In a letter to Darmanin on Monday, the head of a union of magistrates, Ludovic Friat, said France’s judicial professionals could not respond to all requests from the ministry with “four times less prosecutors than the European average”.

Only seven per cent of complaints for sexual assault of a minor in France result in a conviction, according to CIIVISE, an independent commission.