A 17-year-old Dutch rape victim who documented her trauma on Instagram starved herself to death after her parents and the government agreed not to intervene
- A 17-year-old Dutch girl who was raped five years ago and who documented on Instagram her pursuit of euthanasia — an assisted death — has died.
- Readers may find some details in this article upsetting.
- Noa Pothoven suffered PTSD, depression, and anxiety after two men raped her in 2014. She wrote an award-winning biography about her struggle. Her sister said she died on Sunday.
- Pothoven told Instagram followers she stopped eating on Saturday, writing "I breathe but no longer live." Doctors, with her family's agreement, decided not to force-feed her.
- She said: "After years of fighting and fighting it is finished. After many conversations and assessments it was decided that I will be released because my suffering is unbearable."
- In 2018, the Dutch state refused to grant Pothoven permission for euthanasia, which is legal in the country, citing her youth.
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A 17-year-old Dutch girl, who was raped by two men at the aged of 14, has died.
Noa Pothoven detailed her trauma on Instagram, telling how, after years of pain, she was allowed to starve herself to death. She has earlier asked Dutch authorities for permission for euthanasia — an assisted death — but was refused.
Pothoven died at her home in Arnhem on Sunday. She had struggled with PTSD, depression, and anorexia brought on after she suffered a string of sexual assaults.
After years of failed treatment, Pothoven said she had stopped eating on Saturday. Her sister told Dutch media she passed away on Sunday.
Numerous media reports earlier this week appeared to misunderstand Pothoven's story, and reported that she received legal euthanasia.
The Dutch state did ultimately consent to her death, and agreed not to intervene. It did not, however, take any action to bring about her death, which would be required to meet the conventional definition of "euthanasia" (as seen, for example, in this definition by Britain's National Health Service).
In a Pothoven's last Instagram post on her private account, recounted by Holland's Der Gelderlander newspaper, she wrote:
"After years of fighting and fighting it is finished. After many conversations and assessments it was decided that I will be released because my suffering is unbearable."
"It's finished. I have not really been alive for so long, I survive, and not even that. I breathe but no longer live."
Pothoven was denied a request for euthanasia at an end of life clinic in The Hague in December 2018, when she was 16. The clinic told her she was too young, she told Der Gelderlander in 2018.
In the same article, Pothoven's father Frans told the newspaper: "What must, what can we still do? We have tried everything."
"Which institution can still help her?" he asked, adding that Pothoven had lost hope of ever recovering.
The Netherlands was the first state to legalize euthanasia in 2001. Authorities there require proof of "unbearable suffering with no prospect of improvement." A number of other countries, like Luxembourg, allow euthanasia, under varying conditions.
Pothoven wrote a biography in 2018 about her struggle, titled "Winning or Learning". Part of the blurb reads: "She still does her very best to survive every day."
In her book, Pothoven describes being assaulted at a school party at age 11, and again when she was 12. When she was 14, she wrote, she was raped by two men in the Elderveld neighborhood of Arnhem. She did not initially tell anyone what happened, or go to the police, due to shame and fear. Her teen years were blighted by anorexia, and she was admitted to various institutions including one where she was fed through a tube, according to De Gelderlander. Eventually, her mother concluded she should would be best treated at clinic that specialises in youth psychiatry, "where she can stay and where all her physical and mental problems are addressed," her mother said, but no places were available.
"That's crazy," Pothoven told the Dutch paper. "If you have a serious heart disease, you can undergo surgery within a few weeks. But if you become acutely mentally ill, then they say casually: unfortunately, we are full, just go on the waiting list. And, you have to know that one in ten anorexia patients in the Netherlands dies from the consequences of the eating disorder."
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