Victim of a rape in 2016, Nathalie Huygens, a 50-year-old mother, obtained authorization to be euthanized. His psychological distress was recognized by a college of doctors.
“The Nathalie that I was, an epicurean, died on the morning of September 3, 2016.” Almost seven years following being raped, Nathalie Huygens, a 50-year-old Belgian mother, obtained authorization to be euthanized by a college of experts. The two psychiatrists, as well as a doctor, recognized the deep psychological suffering in which the fifty-year-old had been plunged since her violent attack.
In an interview with the Belgian daily The last newstranslated by the news site 7sur7, Nathalie Huygens has agreed to come back to this Saturday in 2016, and its consequences.
“The first few days I really thought I was going to get over it”
This Saturday, September 3, 2016, the mother will run “very early” and take the same route, along the railway line of Vilvorde, a city located in the Flemish region, “like every day”. On her way, a man with a “black face of anger”, who “grabs” her and throws her “into the ditch with enormous force”.
The man beats her, persists to the point of breaking her jaw. “I realize that if he strikes once more, I am dead. So I am silent. I no longer shout, I no longer defend myself, I no longer move”, she testifies. The attacker drags her a few meters away and rapes her at knifepoint before leaving Nathalie Huygens “for dead”.
“If I had known at that moment what existence would await me from that moment, I would have run following him and I would have said to him: ‘Kill me'”, she explains today. today.
“The first days following the fact, I really thought I was going to overcome it,” recalls the mother of two children, 25 and 22 years old. But when Nathalie Huygens returns home, following a week of hospitalization, “the fact that[elle] won’t be[t] never once more the one[elle] have[t] summer has become evident”.
“A part of me seemed to be dead”
“Nothing was right. Everyone told me I was still the same, but I didn’t feel like it. A part of me seemed to be dead (…) I mightn’t be anymore. with my family. I mightn’t stand my husband sleeping with me anymore, I mightn’t stand eating at the table with them anymore,” she explains.
“I had panic and anxiety attacks, ended up having suicidal thoughts and actually attempted suicide,” she says.
Four months following her rape, she was admitted to psychiatry, “the beginning of a long series of admissions over the years, forced or not”.
Despite the years, Nathalie’s psychological distress does not lessen. “I’m so, so tired. Other than sleeping, there’s not been a half hour that I don’t think regarding what happened to me.”
“I fought all this time day following day to keep myself alive, it is not tenable”, confides the mother of the family, who filed a request for euthanasia in 2021, with the support of her family, because she “aspires only to peace”. “I want the suffering to stop, to end. Knowing now that I can die is somehow reassuring.”
In 2022, his eldest son, Wout, published an open letter in support of his choice, in which he wrote that “no child deserves to see his parent suffer like this”. “I wrote this letter so that people realize the consequences that a rape can have (…) justice still has to progress a lot, the aggressors get away with sentences that are too low compared to the suffering of the victims” , confides the young man to BFMTV.
A very structured procedure
In Belgium, euthanasia has been decriminalized since law of 28 May 2002, entered into force on September 20, 2003. Since then, some 2,700 euthanasias have been performed each year. As reminded to BFMTV Me Tom Michel, lawyer in the Paris office and specialist in Belgian law, “80% of the procedures concern those over 70”, people “at the end of life”.
The procedure, “extremely long”, is very supervised and requires that the patient repeats his request. It “involves several doctors, it is a real diagnosis”, recalls the council.
Nathalie Huygens wants to “try to hold out” until the civil trial of her attacker, which she has been waiting “for so long”. Arrested 14 months following the events, he was sentenced to 15 years in prison. Two years ago, the Belgian went to see him in prison: “For three hours I confronted him. At the end he said to me: ‘You are such a beautiful woman, so gentle, so noble, it should never have happened.’ I said to him: ‘It should never have happened to anyone, ever’”.