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World|life|June 5, 2019 / 01:37 PM
17-year-old girl dies by legal euthanasia in the Netherlands after depression

AKIPRESS.COM - A teenager who said she was raped by two men died by legal euthanasia in the Netherlands, EU media report.

Noa Pothoven made a "sad last post" to social media last week in which she announced she would "die within 10 days".

The 17-year-old detailed her struggles with sexual assault, depression, and anorexia in her award-winning biography "Winning or Learning".

She wrote in her book that she was first assaulted at the age of 11 and raped by two men when she was just 14-years-old, facts she hid from her parents because she was ashamed.

In her last post on Instagram, the young girl wrote that she had stopped eating and drinking and that her suffering was "unbearable."

She wrote that her decision was "final" and that she had not been alive for a while.

"I breathe but no longer live," she wrote.

A patient in the Netherlands may receive physician-assisted suicide if they are "enduring unbearable and unendurable suffering", according to the Dutch life ending clinic the 17-year-old consulted.

Originally the clinic said she was too young, according to Dutch news outlet de Gelderlander's 2018 profile of the teenager.

But legally minors are eligible under certain circumstances.

Pothoven wrote on Instagram last week that after many "conversations and reviews" it had been decided.

In 2017, 6,585 people died of euthanasia in the Netherlands, according to the Dutch Regional Euthanasia Review Committees' most recent report. Pathologists must legally report cases to the review committees.

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