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

• Daily Mail
• Catholic Herald
• Image: Care Not Killing

Father Brian Lucas, the general secretary of the Australian Catholic Bishops conference, said he would never betray the trust of a victim if they didn't want to go to police about abuse allegations.

The inquiry is investigating claims the Catholic Church covered up abuse by two Maitland-Newcastle priests, Father James Fletcher and Father Denis McAlinden.

Father Lucas, a former lawyer, told the inquiry he had a special role in the 1990s around New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory to persuade paedophile priests to resign.

Father Lucas said he dealt with about 35 priests, "seducing" more than 10 of them with "strong armed" tactics into agreeing to resign the priesthood.

He said the best way of keeping children safe from priestly abuse was to take the offending priest out of the ministry, and that was his priority.

He said "it staggers me and shocks me" that McAlinden practised as a priest and worked at a school of 7000 children in the Philippines after his priestly faculties were removed in Australia in 1993.

Father Lucas said he took no notes during his interviews with the priests. Questioned by counsel, he agreed that this was because he did not want notes disclosed in any subsequent legal process, but also said if he took notes the priests would not have said anything.

He said it was a "serious and well understood dilemma" within church legal circles that clergy risked being charged with the crime of misprision of a felony, or concealing a serious offence, if they did not go to police with victims' complaints when victims did not want them to.

He said the Church's reputation or the risk of scandal was "irrelevant" to him in a situation where he had to choose between risking criminal liability for misprision of a felony and betraying a victim's wishes. He would choose to respect the victim's wishes, he said.

Sources:

7 News

ABC

South Coast Register

Image: Sydney Morning Herald

Alola Frederickson, 73, became the face of the Hibernian Credit Union fraud last week, after she delivered a short victim-impact statement in Wellington District Court during the sentencing of Susan Terri Hagai.