A severely ill Dutch girl widely reported by international media as having been “legally euthanised” in a clinic in the Netherlands died at home, apparently after voluntarily refusing to eat or drink and with no evidence that her death was assisted.
Noa Pothoven, 17, who for several years had been treated in multiple institutions for severe depression and anorexia, and had made previous attempts to kill herself, died at her parents’ home in Arnhem on 2 June, local media reported.
Media organisations from Australia to Britain and the US to India reported it as a case of “legal euthanasia” performed by a Dutch “end-of-life clinic”, and Noa’s name was trending on social media on Wednesday in countries including Italy, where the story was front-page news.
In fact, it is unclear how she died. No official cause of death has so far been given and there is no evidence the case involved either euthanasia or assisted suicide, both of which are legal in the Netherlands subject to strict conditions.
The Levenseinde or “end-of-life” clinic in The Hague, which Noa contacted in 2017, said on Wednesday it could not comment for privacy reasons. But in order to “put an end to incorrect reporting (in foreign media in particular)”, it released a statement from Noa’s friends: “Noa Pothoven did not die of euthanasia. To stop her suffering, she stopped eating and drinking.”
Noa told De Gelderlander newspaper in an interview in December that she had approached the clinic the previous year to ask if she could be considered for euthanasia or assisted suicide, but was told she could not.
“They consider that I am too young to die,” she told the paper. “They think I should finish my trauma treatment and that my brain must first be fully grown. That lasts until your 21st birthday. It’s broken me, because I can’t wait that long.”
After repeated recent hospital stays, during one of which she was considered so dangerously underweight she was placed in an coma to allow her to be fed intravenously, Noa decided earlier this year she wanted no further treatment, the paper said.
A hospital bed was set up in her parents’ home and last week she refused all food and fluids. Her parents and doctors reportedly agreed not to force-feed her. Dutch medical guidelines stipulate that if a patient withholds their consent, “care providers may not provide treatment, nursing or care”.
In what she called a “sorrowful last post” on Instagram, now deleted, Noa said she had “stopped eating and drinking for a while now, and after many discussions and evaluations, it has been decided to let me go, because my suffering is unbearable”. She said she expected to die within 10 days.
Euthanasia, in which a person’s life is ended by doctors, and assisted suicide, where patients are given the means to end their own life, have been legal in the Netherlands since 2002.
The law governing euthanasia and assisted suicide requires the patient’s suffering to be unbearable, with no prospect of improvement, and their request must be made voluntarily, not under the influence of others.
The patient must also have been fully informed of their condition, prospects and choices, another independent doctor must agree with the request, and a doctor must be present when the procedure is performed, either by the doctor or the patient. For children aged between 12 and 16, the parents’ consent is required.
In 2017, the most recent year for which figures are available, 4% of all deaths in the Netherlands – 6,091 people – were from euthanasia. More than 80% had incurable cancer, neurological disorders, cardiovascular diseases or pulmonary disease. Only 1% had a psychiatric disorder, and only one was under 18.
In an award-winning autobiography published last year, titled Winning or Learning, Noa said she had been sexually molested at a children’s party aged 11, and later raped by two men when she was 14.
She described her subsequent mental illness, telling de Gelderlander in her interview that she hoped her book might prove useful for other young people facing similar problems, since there were no specialised Dutch institutions for teenagers needing psychiatric help.
Noa had written graphically in her autobiography of her horror at the involuntary hospital admissions and treatments she had previously undergone, saying she “almost felt like a criminal, even though I hadn’t so much as stolen a piece of candy in my life”.
De Gelderlander said she had spent her final days saying goodbye to her close family. A spokeswoman for the Dutch MP Lisa Westerveld, who has campaigned for improved youth psychiatric care and visited Noa shortly before her death, told DutchNews that as far as was known, Noa had died “because she didn’t eat any more”.
According to multiple sources at British national newspapers, news outlets were alerted to the story by the newswire Central European News, which specialises in supplying unusual and quirky foreign stories to English-language news outlets.
CEN, which has previously been accused of providing unreliable information, did not immediately return a request for comment. Michael Leidig, who runs the agency, has always contested claims that it provides dubious information.
Earlier this year, the company lost the latest stage in a four-year libel case against BuzzFeed News over a 5,000-word article in which Leidig was described as the “king of bullshit news”.
Additional reporting by Jim Waterson