Dutch medics have performed the euthanasia of a sex abuse victim who could not live with the ordeal she had suffered as a girl.
The woman, who was in her 20s, was given a lethal injection after battling severe psychiatric problems for 15 years.
Details of the case were released by Dutch authorities anxious to demonstrate that mercy killings in their country are carried out under full and correct medical supervision.
A report on the case said that the woman, who was killed last year, had post-traumatic stress disorder that was resistant to treatment.
Her condition included severe anorexia, chronic depression and suicidal mood swings, tendencies to self-harm, hallucinations, obsessions and compulsions.
She also had physical difficulties and was almost entirely bedridden.
Her psychiatrist said “’there was no prospect or hope for her. The patient experienced her suffering as unbearable”.
However, the report also disclosed that two years before her death the woman’s doctors called for a second opinion, and on the advice of the new doctors she had an intensive course of trauma therapy.
“This treatment was temporarily partially successful,” the report said.
But regulators found that doctors had behaved properly in authorising the death of the sex abuse victim.
The report found that all therapies had been exhausted.
“There was no prospect or hope for her,” it said.
“She had constantly felt that she was dying, but did not die.”
“The desire of the patient was to die,” the study said.
The woman was deemed mentally competent and able to request euthanasia.
This was granted after the specialist treating her took the precaution of seeking the opinions of a second psychiatrist and a doctor.
British MP Fiona Bruce, chair of the Parliamentary All-Party Pro-Life Group, said: “This tragic situation shows why euthanasia should never be legalised in this country.”
“What this woman needed, at a desperate point in her young life, was help and support to overcome her problems, not the option of euthanasia.”
Sources