Fury in France after child murder suspect's criminal record released

There is fury in France over the murder of an 11-year-old girl after it emerged the principal suspect had been identified several times in the past as a potential child molester.

Lyhanna disappeared after school a week ago in the Gers area of south-west France. Her body was found on farmland near the town of Fleurance on Thursday.

A 41-year-old man named as Jérome B has been in custody since Monday. He is the father of a friend of Lyhanna, and two witnesses said they saw the girl in his car on the afternoon of her disappearance.

Amid the shock and grief, the affair took a political turn as details of Jérome B's police record were released by officials.

He had been named in four separate cases involving young girls in recent years. Two were closed for lack of evidence, and in a third he was dismissed from his job as a maintenance worker at a secondary school for "inappropriate behaviour" towards a teenager.

But the fourth affair has lit a fuse leading to the highest reaches of the justice system.

Jérome B was the object of a complaint last August from the mother of 10-year-old Rosa, who said she had been raped by him on several occasions, according to the state prosecutor in the town of Auch.

But shockingly, even though medical examination substantiated Rosa's claims, not once in the nine months since her family went to police had Jérome B been questioned by investigators.