Louis, a victim whose surname has yet to be released by the French authorities, was just 17 years old. He was, the Gendarmerie said, lured to an industrial site by five youths around a similar age – the arrested suspects range from 16 to 19 – and then brutally beaten to death, with his murder filmed and the footage apparently retained as a trophy.
When he died, Louis was in the care of the French state, having been placed there because of family difficulties. He was also in fear of his life and had expressed as much.
He had made a complaint to the French police about the five youths who would go on to murder him after an earlier assault some weeks before. Further, his alleged killers were not first-time offenders. Several of them were “known to the police” and had established juvenile criminal records.
For French Authorities, the Facts Are Damaging
So these are the facts: a 17-year-old boy in the care of the French state was murdered openly by young men known by the French state to be criminal and with the state already having been made aware of the threat to the victim. The attack, prosecutors say, was calculated and premeditated. The fact that it was filmed suggests that, as in much of Europe, those who carried it out had little fear of the consequences for them.
Then there is the matter of immigration: in the language now universally beloved by European police forces, French authorities have described Louis’ alleged killers as “French nationals”. But the circulated footage has prompted numerous online commentators to speculate that several of the suspects may be of migrant heritage. This has led many French citizens to ask the kind of questions that European governing classes increasingly fear and detest – questions about integration, culture and whether the social DNA of France has been entirely altered over a few decades without French people noticing.
Three Separate Systemic Failures?
Why is this case so significant, beyond the human tragedy at its heart? Because it combines three specific areas of perceived state incompetence into a single tragedy.
First, Louis was in the care of the state. He was a vulnerable child, whose welfare obligations had been assumed by the French government, which had taken direct responsibility for his welfare. As in many other jurisdictions – such as the UK, where many “grooming gang” victims were in state care – it appears that Louis may have been failed and left exposed by the very agencies that were supposed to act in loco parentis.
Second, there is inarguable policing failure: in this case, prosecutors concede that a complaint had been made by the victim against the alleged perpetrators. Police were directly informed by Louis himself that he was at risk. Rather than taking action to protect him, it appears that the police response led directly to his death, with a witness saying that the attackers taunted Louis about going to the police as they killed him.
Then there is the fact that the youths suspected of this murder were at liberty, several of them having serious criminal records as teenagers. As in many other European states, there are questions as to why people with a high propensity to violence and crime – having been apprehended by authorities – are so often released back into society with little more than a slap on the wrist.
And third, there is the matter of immigration and the thorny question of culture.
As in so many other countries, the reaction of the French authorities to Louis has been to refuse to acknowledge that any question of this nature is even legitimate. The words “French national” are cited, though not to inform, but in a recognizable effort to shut down any debate linking this crime to French migration policy.
Yet there are big questions here: should not the words “French national” mean “somebody steeped in French culture and norms”? If the words instead simply refer to the particular coat of arms on a person’s passport, then they tell the public little beyond the administrative division of Europe within which the document was granted.
Or to put it in plainer terms: if a person is a French national, why do so many not behave in accordance with French culture and norms? Or as one person put it this week: “If everybody on the planet can be French, then nobody can be truly French.”
Deep Discomfort
These three issues combine to paint a picture that is deeply uncomfortable for French authorities, who do not wish to discuss any of them, and deeply angering to many frustrated French people who do not understand why their country’s government seems so afraid of the conversation and so prone to incompetence of the life-threatening variety.
Meanwhile, as ever, the public remains starved of details about the crime. Louis is denied, by French law, his full identity or surname in the media. His assailants are granted similar, but more beneficial, anonymity. The entire crime is swept behind the legitimate but often abused curtain of “under investigation”, with answers unlikely to emerge for months. Officials use the legal process to avoid comment. The public’s anger rises, and as so often in Europe, the official response is to sniffily insist that any conversation is both illegitimate and dangerous.
Yet governments, for all their power, cannot control what people are talking about. And this week, in France, they are talking about Louis.
As they should.
