Thousands of people in white, in silence, down the streets of a small French town. No chanting, no banners full of anger - just one sign that says it all: "Never again." The march in Fleurance was for Liana, an eleven-year-old girl whose body was found in an abandoned grain silo, fifteen kilometers from where she was last seen.

Liana disappeared on May 29, when she got into a gray car. A week later she was found dead. The suspect, Jerome Barela, a school caretaker and father of two, first denied it, claiming he had left the girl at the pool. But what turned this tragedy from horrific into unbearable is what came afterward.

Last August, a mother reported that Barela had persistently sexually abused her ten-year-old daughter. The investigation confirmed the abuse. And yet - the authorities did not question him for the three months before Liana's abduction and murder. The prosecution delayed the case for weeks, then another six weeks to assign it to investigators. A child who could have been saved, was not.

French President Emmanuel Macron acknowledged the "unacceptable" failures of the justice system. But the acknowledgment comes late for the family that led the march, carrying a picture of their daughter through the town. An acknowledgment brings no one back.

For the Balkan reader, this isn't only a French story. How many times have we heard at home that someone "had been reported earlier," that "the system knew," that the paperwork sat on someone's desk until it was too late? The question Fleurance shouted in silence is the same everywhere: what is a system for if it reacts only once the worst has already happened?