A 17-year-old girl who was raped as a young child and felt she could no longer go on living has been legally euthanised at home with the help of an 'end-of-life clinic'.
Noa Pothoven died in a hospital bed in her living room after being granted the right to euthanasia in the Netherlands.
The Dutch teenager from Arnhem felt that life had become unbearable and she could no longer carry on after she was attacked and sexually assault on three separate occasions, beginning when she was just 11 years old.
Noa Pothoven announced her decision in an Instagram post (above), in which she asked people not to try and change her mind and said 'love is letting go'
In Holland, children as young as 12 can be granted euthanasia if they desire, but only after a doctor concludes that the patient's suffering is unbearable with no clear end in sight.
In 2017, some 6,585 people chose euthanasia to end their own lives in the Netherlands, about 4.4 per cent of the total number of more than 150,000 registered deaths in the country, according to the Regional Euthanasia Review Committee which strictly monitors all cases.
Dutch law allows euthanasia when each of the following conditions are met:
The patient's suffering is unbearable with no prospect of improvement The request to end their life must be voluntary (without the influence of mental illness and drugs) and persist over time The patient must be fully aware of their condition, prospects and options A second, independent doctor must confirm the above conditions are met The death must be carried out in a medically appropriate fashion with the doctor present The patient is at least 12 years old, and patients under 16 require parental consent Afterwards the doctor must report the cause of death to the municipal coronerThe practice is hotly debated but illegal in the UK, but it's legal in some US states, Canada and Belgium.
In a social media post one day before her death last Sunday, Noa made her decision public.
She wrote: 'I deliberated for quite a while whether or not I should share this, but decided to do it anyway.
'Maybe this comes as a surprise to some, given my posts about hospitalisation, but my plan has been there for a long time and is not impulsive.
'I will get straight to the point: within a maximum of 10 days I will die. After years of battling and fighting, I am drained. I have quit eating and drinking for a while now, and after many discussions and evaluations, it was decided to let me go because my suffering is unbearable.'
Noa added that she never felt as though she was 'alive', rather surviving, writing: 'I breathe, but I no longer live.'
Finally she asked her friends and followers on Instagram to 'not convince me that this is not good, this is my decision and it is final. 'Love is letting go, in this case,' she added.
According to the Dutch newspaper De Gelderlander, Noa's parents had no idea she was unwell until her mother discovered a plastic envelope in her room filled with farewell letters to her parents, friends and acquaintances.
'I was in shock,' Lisette told De Gelderlander. 'We didn't get it. Noa is sweet, beautiful, smart, social and always cheerful. How is it possible that she wants to die?
'We have never received a real answer. We just heard that her life was no longer meaningful. For only a year and a half have we known what secret she has carried with her over the years.'
That secret, as outlined in her book, was that Noa was assaulted at a schoolfriend's party when she was 11 years old, and one year later at another teenager's party.
Noa was granted euthanasia because her case met all the conditions required by law since the practice was legalised in the Netherlands in 2002
At the age of 14, she was raped by two men in the Arnhem neighbourhood of Elderveld - but stayed quiet 'out of fear and shame'.
'I relive the fear, that pain every day,' she said last year. 'Always scared, always on my guard. And to this day my body still feels dirty. My house has been broken into, my body, that can never be undone.'
She spent the last few years going in and out of hospitals, institutions and specialist centers, and her parents started working less to care for their daughter.
During her time in compulsory mental health care she wore only a specially-made dress, which was so strong that it could not be torn and allow her to take her own life.
She wrote in her autobiography that these stints in isolation made her feel 'almost feel like a criminal, while I haven't so much as stolen sweets from a store in my life'.
Last year she was admitted to the Rijnstate hospital in Arnhem in a critical condition; seriously underweight and close to organ failure. She was put in a coma and fed artificially.
Noa was making her way through a bucket list and had ticked off fourteen of the
