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.
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."
