Laëtitia, a documentary tribute to the young woman murdered by

Aired this Monday at 9:05 p.m. on France 2, the miniseries is an adaptation of Ivan Jablonka's book on this dramatic news item that had horrified France.

In January 2011, the Laetitia affair shook France. An 18-year-old girl, Laëtitia, goes missing on the night of January 18 to 19. She is a seemingly uneventful young girl who lives with her twin sister in a foster family in Pornic. Suspicion quickly fell on who would give his name to the case, Tony Meilhon.
This man in his thirties at the time of the facts is a repeat offender, already convicted of rape cases. He was arrested 48 hours after the disappearance, witnesses having seen him spend the evening with the young girl. He quickly admits to having killed her by accident, he says.

The residents are mobilizing to try to find the young girl with the help of the police. His dismembered body will be gradually found in the surroundings. The last texts sent by the young girl to a friend indicate that Tony Meilhon also raped her during that fatal evening.
The President of the Republic takes up the case and accuses the courts of being too slow and lax, angering the magistrates. The latter go on strike in return to protest against the lack of resources allocated to justice.
The horror does not end there: in August 2011, the twin girls' foster father, Gilles Patron, was indicted for sexual assault on Jessica, Laëtitia's sister and four other victims. He will be sentenced in 2014 to eight years in prison.
In 2015, Tony Meilhon was sentenced on appeal to life imprisonment for murder.

A complex and revealing news item

Historian and author Ivan Jablonka wrote a book in 2016 on this crime, which became a state affair revealing many social realities. “Laëtitia or the end of men” is a work centered on the life of the young woman. We discover there his difficult childhood, with a violent father, who mistreats them and mistreats their mother.

The work is adapted for France 2 by Jean-Xavier Lestrade, who delivers a mini-series of six episodes. The scenario was developed from the book and in relation to those close to Laëtitia. The series focuses on the young girl's family, but also follows the police investigation and the childhood of the two young girls. It shows the chief warrant officer who conducted the investigation, the social worker who followed the twins, also the biological father of the twins, all very finely embodied by the actors.
The director says: "Laëtitia allows us to discover a hidden world where violence is ordinary, everyday, almost invisible, but radiates part of the territories and haunts the people who live there".
The two twins are apparently smooth young girls, despite the violence encountered in their daily life, and try to get out of it. Laëtitia had everything to succeed: a popular worker, soon to be financially independent, surrounded by friends and pretty. The mini-series rehumanizes her, presenting her childhood, her adolescence, her joys and sorrows and her progress towards adulthood.
"They have a life struck by misfortune and at the same time in the midst of the chaos in which they grow up they show courage to try to mend their wounds, to try to build a life that is absolutely overwhelming" analyzes the director.
Laëtitia was taken away from her parents' home because her father was convicted of raping his mother. Tony Meilhon was previously convicted of rape when he committed the same crime on the young girl. Her twin sister suffered for several years of sexual violence at the hands of their foster father. Sexual violence is omnipresent in the lives of her two sisters.
We also see the dysfunctions in the reception of children in care. The two young girls leave a violent family to enter the home of a predator, who sexually assaults Jessica.
The Laëtitia case is also the beginning of the use of the term "feminicide". In 2016, Ivan Jablonka already uses this term in his book. According to the author, Laëtitia dies above all because she is a woman, who refuses the advances of the murderer.

Male violence blindly shatters the fate of a young girl, which the series aptly recounts.
Find the 6 episodes of 45 minutes on Monday September 21 and 28, and fully accessible on the France 2 website.

Video by Anais bertrand