Emmy had made her mother, Laure Marivain, promise to "go all the way." Emmy died on March 12, 2022, after a seven-year battle with cancer. She was 11 years old. "Going all the way" meant going to a hearing, Wednesday, October 9, at 2:00 pm, at the Rennes appeals court in Brittany. "You've got to let the world know, Mom," had said Emmy. Pictures of her smiling together with her brother and sister adorn the living room of the new family home that she never got to discover, in the Nantes region, to the south of Brittany. Marivain wants to make the world know that Emmy didn't fall ill "by accident," as doctors had repeatedly told her. She also had to "to lift a taboo": That of flower professionals' exposure to pesticides. "If someone had warned me, my daughter would still be here," said Marivain, who worked as a florist from 2004 to 2008, and then a flower sales agent, from 2008 to 2011, in the Pays de la Loire region of western France.

Emmy is the first child whose death has been recognized by the Pesticide Victims Compensation Fund (FIVP), Le Monde and Radio France's investigative unit have learned. The FIVP has admitted to "the causal link between [Emmy's] pathology and her exposure to pesticides during the prenatal period." This is a first for a deceased victim. It's also a first for a flower industry professional.

However, the compensation proposed by the FIVP only takes into account the losses suffered by the victim's heirs, with a fixed sum of €25,000 for each of the child's parents, in this case. It is this compensation that Marivain and her husband have contested before the Rennes appeals court. "It's as if Emmy and her family hadn't suffered all those years," said François Lafforgue, the Marivains' lawyer.

Between her January 2015 diagnosis of precursor B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia and her death, Emmy went through one period of complete remission and three relapses. She spent 468 days in the pediatric oncology department of a hospital in Nantes, undergoing one medical examination after another, as well as surgical procedures. She suffered from deep lumber pain, sciatica, headaches, vomiting, exhausting chemotherapy sessions, hair loss, weight loss, social isolation, and the fear of dying. Emmy's ordeal was recorded in medical reports. That of her family was not recorded anywhere. When contacted, the FIVP's administrator, the Agricultural Social Mutual Fund, stated that it had "no mandate to comment on the compensation policy of the fund created by law."

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