11-year-old Lyhanna was raped and killed by the father of one of her school friends, Jérôme Barella, a man against whom multiple complaints for inappropriate or criminal sexual behaviours had already been filed since 2020.

The latest report dated from last August. Nine months later, though a medical exam confirmed the 10-year-old victim’s wounds, Barella had still not been brought in for questioning. The police station also threatened to sue the child’s mother for harassment because she kept calling, asking for the rapes to be investigated.

That is the climate in which we came out onto the street last night. Exhausted of repeating the same things. Exhausted of hearing the same fake cries of surprise, of 'how could this happen'. But determined to keep showing up, to keep working, to keep writing, to keep demanding broad change that never comes, or only in meagre droplets.

There were just shy of 3,000 of us out in Paris, and several thousand more across the country. In other words, not very many people. As a comparison, about a million and a half protested in Paris after the 2015 terrorist attacks. Yet 160,000 children and millions of women are victims of sexual violence every year in France. If that's not terrorism, I don't know what is. But children are rarely anyone's political priority.

There were also — and I don't usually like to go on this terrain but it must be said and I am angry — only a handful of men.

The men are elsewhere, of course. They are in the government, saying "we must take full responsibility" and "I will not resign" in the same breath. They are on social media, commenting "Bring back the death penalty" and watching 'catch-a-pedophile' spectacles on Twitch like it's porn. They are on TV, calling Lyhanna a 'teenager', using feminist concepts and standing on the shoulders of feminist organising but never daring to say the word feminist in all their puzzled discussions of what is to be done.

But when the time comes to actually do the work, learn how violence really functions, draft the policies, vote differently, protect children in ways that don't flatter their egos and indulge their revenge fantasies, suddenly there are far fewer of them standing alongside us.

We will keep showing up, with or without them. We will make this change happen. For all the Lyhannas of the world, past and future. We will keep showing up, to paraphrase Alice Gayraud, until a child no longer needs to die in order to be listened to.