A 50-year-old mother was raped in 2016. Traumatized, she asked for the right to euthanasia. A consortium of Belgian health professionals granted him this right.
“I really thought I was going to get over this.” Several years have passed since the rape of which she was the victim, but Nathalie Huygens, 50, has never forgotten. This mother of two children, who lives in Belgium, has just been granted the right to euthanasia by a college of health professionals: an exceptional decision, while the 50-year-old does not suffer from any fatal pathology.
But since 2016 – when she was raped – Nathalie Huygens explains that part of herself is “dead”. The months that followed the events were particularly difficult: the 50-year-old told our colleagues from 7sur7panic and anxiety attacks and his suicide attempt.
“I can’t eat hard food anymore”
The mother of the family was subsequently admitted to psychiatry. But this one also suffers from physical pain: “During these more than six years, apart from sleeping, there is not half an hour where I do not think about what happened to me, explains the fifty-year-old to of our Belgian colleagues. Already, I live continuously with the physical sequelae. I can no longer eat hard food, my left eye hurts me permanently.”
But the trauma is persistent. She then requested a request for euthanasia in Belgium. On site, such a request is only legal if the patient is able to express his will on his own, if he is conscious, if he is subject to constant, unbearable and unappeasable physical and / or psychological suffering. and finally if this disorder results from a serious or incurable accidental or pathological condition. The mother of the family is also supported by her son who, in an open letter published in March 2022, explains: “We have been in a situation for years where mom is still physically alive, but mentally long gone. instead of my mom, I wouldn’t want to live either.”
If she wishes to be euthanized as soon as possible, Nathalie Huygens however explained that she wanted to attend the civil trial of her attacker. An event she has been waiting for “a long time”.