Woman dies by euthanasia after becoming paraplegic trying to commit suicide after gang rape

[AComplicatedWoman]

This is one of the most heartbreaking news stories I have come across.

Noelia Castillo had a difficult childhood and spent much of it in care homes. She was sexually assaulted by her ex-boyfriend of four years after she had taken sleeping pills to help her sleep, and was assaulted on another occasion by several men in a nightclub. She attempted suicide in October 2022, and it left her unable to use her legs and in a wheelchair. Noelia conducted a long legal battle with her father for the right to end her life and she died by euthanasia on Thursday.

RIP Noelia. I am so sorry that your life was destroyed by these abhorrent abusive men.

www.independent.co.uk/news/world/noelia-castillo-euthanasia-law-spain-b2946671.html

Those who are against her free choice want to hope the are never ever given a reason to need it. Poor beautiful soul. Fucking men.

I would charge them with murder I I could. All of them, her abusers, her neglectful family and the state.
She did what she wished at the end. Stop her suffering, and I'm ok with that. But the events of her life that make a young lady suffering like she did and whish to die is something I will never be ok with it.

No I don’t think @CharlotteRumpling has issues with men at all. I have wonderful sons and a husband and I agree with her. But I also have a daughter and I’m female so I know most men are not decent. Seems you have an issue with women to me.

on what basis are you saying they are not of sound mind?

Of course men played the main part in this poor young woman's demise but she had been let down by many people in her short life and that, sadly also includes people like her mother.

According to the reports online Noelia had been neglected and abused from childhood, her mother was part of that neglect.

Euthanasia varies.

people are different. Contexts are different.

in a situation where someone is diagnosed with eg terminal cancer and it is pretty much 100% that they are going to die very soon most people understand even if they don’t agree with the idea that the person should be able to cut short their suffering,

equally, there are many physical disabilities where the level of pain and suffering is such that although some people are able to find enjoyment in life anyway others do not and again many people can understand why someone might want to not endure the pain.

me personally I came to the conclusion many years ago that regardless of the pain I needed to live to make sure my ExH did not fuck up out children’s lives. It’s a common motive for keeping going apparently.

my children are now (just about) launched and my ExH no longer has the power to fuck up their lives (largely due to them no longer seeing him).

but now I still enjoy singing and cats and sunshine and swimming and when the nhs aren’t fucking with my pain meds I do have quality of life.

chronic pain services and palliative care services only seem to have gone downhill in my lifetime. I completely understand why for example my mum is terrified of dying in an nhs hospital after my dad died of Covid in the pandemic.

things aren’t going to get better. People should be allowed to opt out of the end of life suffering at a minimum.

The difference is one is criminalising an act normally done due to mental illness and the other is about the power of the state.

Again what basisi are you saying suicide is always driven by mental illness. are all those who attend dignitas mentally ill in your view?

That’s your opinion it does not happen to be mine

I think most people understand about individual suffering, but the issue of assisted suicide goes beyond the individual and has wider moral and ethical implications for all of us. Not everything is about the individual or about individual 'autonomy'.

At one level yes.

But I think this needs closer scrutiny as it’s dangerously close to the logic which police used when saying those 15 year olds chose to get involved with grooming gangs.

some of the statements up thread sound really close to #bekind. Do you really trust our institutions to do the right thing after how this gender stuff has played out?

I was previously a supporter of assisted dying in the uk and now im not. I just don’t trust these institutions to do the right thing for vulnerable people. Their track record is woeful.

im not saying it’s a straight no - im saying we all need to understand the pathway these campaigns take…

like the IOC initially saying that chromosome testing made some athletes upset so they’d stop…. Eventually leading to shut up bitches stop whining about male boxers punching women…

if we do go down this suicide route in the Uk then what are the guardrails that cant be removed later?

100%

And I also don’t understand how this can go-exist with those who threaten suicide if they don’t get gender surgery/hormones. Why do they get help/affirmation and the other vulnerable/disabled people dont? Creepy

I happen to completely agree with euthanasia and almost every circumstance through the argument of personal bodily autonomy. And I disagree with abortion under almost every circumstance of exactly the same argument bodily autonomy and choice of the unborn child. I do understand that many people do not like that position but it is a morally defensible one even if you don’t agree.

With the additional caveat as I mentioned earlier that sometimes abortion is the lesser of two evils but it is never not wrong.

Absolutely heartbreaking case. Like a pp I'm conflicted about it. While I absolutely support someone's right to die, would she still have wanted to die if she was given the best medical care money could buy, mental health support, a safe and warm home adapted to her needs? From the State's point of view its much cheaper to offer euthanasia. So its a situation where people choose between death or muddling along in a difficult life with no support. How incredibly sad 💔

I agree with this - the biggest failure is that a young woman got to the point she was so traumatised by repeated abuse and rape that she attempted suicide and then was so profoundly disabled she could not have a meaningful life. Whilst no doubt her rapists are still alive and may very well have harmed multiple women to the point of them feeling suicidal too.

Having read about the case in the end I do think she did have the right to die. It was right it took a long time and the Supreme Court to make this decision because otherwise, yes, we will just have abusive husbands using the state as a tool of abuse and murder and offing their wives all over the place. It can so easily lead to the decriminalisation of murder. But I also think the men who raped her should be in prison for life, and they won't be. The consequences for the women abused are always worse than the consequences for the criminal abusers currently. Misogyny, and the state allowing violence against women and girls to have very little meaningful consequence.

What we should have is significant consequences for early red flag VAWG behaviour - so Wayne Couzens being arrested and held by the police and then charged when he flashed at a Mcdonalds (which was reported and caught on video) rather than not doing anything and leaving him free to murder. Letting men get away with these lower level crimes against women (and children) gives them the message it's ok and they escalate and it causes immense harm to women which no-one is bothered to truly quantify. I've known women who've committed suicide due to rape and abuse years after it happened having tried for decades to live with it and deal with it and having failed.

But this 'assisted dying' should not be the norm. I recently read about a case in Canada where they have 'assisted dying' (state sanctioned murder) where an elderly woman herself wanted palliative care and wanted to live but her husband pushed for her to be killed, and the state killed her. So that was state sanctioned murder.

Apparently the husband said he couldn't cope with being her carer any more so rather than the state following her wishes and providing alternative support they decided she was quite old and going to die eventually anyway (well, isn't everyone?) and so they just murdered her. It's really, really disturbing. There are multiple stories such as this from Canada.

The poor woman had endured so much and knew the rest of her life would be a living hell. Who the hell are we to decide she should continue to suffer?
The majority of women on here are pro choice when it comes to abortion but are out raged at this woman wanting to make a choice about her body, her life. How dare you expect this poor poor woman to suffer incredible physical and mental pain every moment for the next 50 years. Her body, her choice.

I used to be like that too as a teenager. Everything made in to something serious and drama but then I realised life wasnt so black and white anymore.

Do you also cry for all the lost babies when your husband jerks off in a tissue too? Or are sperms life not so important to you?

Anyway let’s not derail the thread about abortion rights and how men think it’s ok to force women to give birth.

I believe that poster is male and therefore will never be in a position where an abortion is needed

Such a tragic tale of the impact of male violence.

Understand why she wanted to end her life. But I agree with @oldtiredcyclist on state-sanctioned killing. Money should be ploughed into supporting people, including a huge amount more to help survivors of rape.

I do think this woman had the right to die given the situation she was in, but we should not be discussing this as 'her body her choice' without noticing that some criminal men took away her choice (not to be raped) many years ago which directly lead to this decision and she did NOT have bodily autonomy then. We should look at what consequences they've had from committing gang rape. I bet they aren't that bad. I bet those men aren't dead nor want to die. We need to look at the bigger picture.

This woman had the right to die. But really, she should also have had the right to a life free of gang rape. She didn't have bodily autonomy about that, why not?

In some cases women deciding to die is a logical and rational choice - e.g. the rate of suicide among women in Afghanistan is up. This is not because these women do not want to live - I'm sure if someone came along and give them a plane ticket to the UK and the right to live here they wouldn't do so - but because they are being treated so appallingly and there is no prospect of improvement (indeed, it keeps getting worse), control in death is preferable to the alternative which WILL be protracted torture and then death - as a certainty. Dying in childbirth in agonising pain after you've been raped repeatedly or after having been beaten and tortured by your 'husband' and then denied any medical care at all because that's the law in Afghanistan.

What we need to look at is why sometimes death for women is a rational choice. I personally want to change that so that more women have lives worth living.

The woman was a paraplegic who was incontinent and in pain both physically and mentally. What was she supposed to do just get on with it and hope that in 40 years when she’s 75 she’ll be cured? What about every single day she lived for them 40 years?

I have MS and I know what it’s like to in pain every day. Assisted dying isn’t something I think about, but if I got to the point of having no control over my own body and it was an option for me, I sincerely hope that my family never block that choice in the hope that they will produce some miracle therapy in 40 years.

Money should be plowed into stopping male violence and making men who commmit VAWG really truly pay for their choice.

And we absolutely cannot claim that bodily autonomy is important in death and accept the fucking woeful rape prosecution statistics so that most men that rape and destroy lives get away with it. Because they are denying women bodily autonomy too.

Currently virtually every prison sentence is not as bad as the consequences to the rape victim. I really think this has to change.

And don't get me started on child abuse and the men who get off without any prison time or negative consequences AT ALL for watching the worst torture of children. And then we're not even allowed to know who they are because of their privacy.

I'm going to point out that I was polite and accommodating of opinions I do not agree with. And you're the one coming back with teenage insults.

True. But so many posters on here think this issue does not exist because " most men are decent".

Ironically I was in that position when doctors wanted to abort me before I was born. Yes I am male but I don't agree that abortion is a female only issue. This will hugely derail so let's not. But the argument is the same as one of bodily autonomy for euthanasia which I support wholeheartedly within reasonable guardrails.