• Joyce Scholten, the best friend of 17-year-old teen Noa Pothoven from the Netherlands who died over the weekend, wrote a heartfelt tribute to her late friend on Instagram. 
• "I'm going to miss you terribly, but it's better this way," she wrote in the post.
• The teen's death sent shockwaves across the world after multiple outlets inaccurately reported that her cause of death was euthanasia and that her death was sanctioned by Dutch officials.
• Pothoven, who suffered from severe trauma following repeated sexual assaults and a rape, died over the weekend after days without food and water.
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The best friend of the 17-year-old Dutch teen and rape victim who died after she decided to stop eating and drinking wrote a heartfelt tribute to her late friend this week on social media.

"Goodbye sweetheart. I love you infinitely," Joyce Scholten wrote in the Instagram post about her friend, Noa Pothoven, which was first flagged by the Daily Mail. "I'm going to miss you terribly, but it's better this way. I'm going to continue the fight and show you up there that I can do it. I love you."

Pothoven's death sent shockwaves across the world earlier this week after multiple outlets inaccurately reported that the teen's cause of death was euthanasia — raising legal and ethical questions about why assisted suicide would be administered for someone so young.  

Read more: Dutch clinic shuts down false reports that it assisted the death of a 17-year-old rape victim: 'Noa Pothoven did not die of euthanasia'

The teen struggled with depression after facing repeated sexual assaults and a rape, saying the prolonged suffering stemming from those harrowing strings of abuse made life too unbearable to live. She published a memoir describing her chilling attacks, as well as the post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and anorexia she experienced in the aftermath.

While she had approached an end-of-life clinic in the Netherlands when she was 16, that request was rejected, according to a local publication. Paul Bolwerk, a journalist at a local newspaper who followed the teen's struggles, told POLITICO that the family wanted to use electro-convulsive therapy as treatment, but it wasn't permitted for a minor. He said that during the last months of her life, she attempted suicide on several occasions.

Over the weekend, the teen died in her home after days without food and water.

While the Dutch state did ultimately consent to Pothoven's death, and agreed not to intervene, they did not partake in any action to bring about her death. Hence, it wouldn't be considered euthanasia. 

In a final Instagram post to her 10,000 followers in the days before her death, which is no longer on the page, Pothoven wrote that "within a maximum of 10 days I will die."

"After years of fighting and struggling it is over," she wrote. "I have stopped eating and drinking for a while now, and after many conversations and reviews it has been decided that I will be let go because my suffering is unbearable... I have not really been alive for so long, I am surviving, and even that not really. I breathe but I am no longer alive."

• Read more:
• 55 years ago, the FBI tried to blackmail Martin Luther King Jr with a 'suicide' letter. This week, newly discovered documents finally explain the sordid origin of the plan.
• The woman with disabilities who gave birth after being raped at an Arizona nursing facility may have been pregnant before, new documents reveal
• A New York judge gave no jail time to a man who admitted he raped a teenage girl

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