Lyhanna Ramauy Bernard, an 11-year-old girl, with brown eyes and 1.57 meters tall, was last seen leaving her school in Fleurance (80 kilometers from Toulouse) last Friday. All suspicions regarding her disappearance have fallen on Jérôme Barella, a 41-year-old acquaintance of the family and father of two daughters who attend the same school, who admits to picking up the girl in his car and leaving her at the municipal pool.
While the entire 6,000 inhabitants of the town are involved in the desperate search for Lyhanna and the gendarmes organize searches in the forests near the pool, the Toulouse Prosecutor's Office acknowledges that the suspect was reported in 2025 by the mother of a 10-year-old girl who claimed to have been raped. Five years earlier, he had been dismissed as a maintenance worker at a school for "inappropriate behavior" with a student.
Jérôme Barella maintains his innocence but remains previously detained as the alleged perpetrator of the 'abduction' of Lyhanna. Auch Prosecutor Clémence Meyer has described his statements as "incoherent and imprecise," convinced as she is that he holds the key to Lyhanna's disappearance despite his denials.
"I told my daughter not to speak to him again and not to see him," meanwhile declared the mother of the missing girl, Charly Rameau, in statements to ICI Occitanie. "Lyhanna had been invited to a pajama party at his house in September and October. When she went to pick her up, she told me he had bought her a special pizza with chorizo and tickled her."
"Like any mother would, I asked if he had gone further," Lyhanna's mother recounted. "She said no, looking very surprised. She didn't understand what I was talking about... Later, we found out that he often waited for her outside the school and brought her snacks, among other things."
The mother regrets not paying more attention to the signs, and the residents of Fleurance cannot understand why the investigation against the suspect for the alleged rape of a minor - transferred from the Toulouse prosecutor's office to Auch in December - had not resulted in any concrete action to prevent further abuse.
The case that has gripped the French people has emerged days after the worrying report from the Ministry of the Interior on the occasion of the International Missing Children's Day. Last year, 40,953 disappearances of minors were reported in France (112 each day), the vast majority of which were runaways or cases resolved within a few hours.
The most striking aspect of the report, however, is the figure of 1,629 "disturbing disappearances" (an 18.6% increase) where the safety or integrity of minors is threatened, either by possible sexual offenses or psychological issues. For the first time, the majority of cases of "disturbing disappearances" like Lyhanna's involve minors under 15 years old.