Extreme burn victim11/30/2023 What are the laws around the purchase of acids? The prosecution appealed and the retrial was granted. She was troubled by the fact that had the euthanasia happened in the UK, it would have been murder – which in her view would have broken the “causal link”. Why was the first trial halted?Īt the halfway stage of the first trial, the judge, Mrs Justice May, ruled that the murder charge should be dismissed. Richard Smith QC, representing Wallace, told the jury: “What happened in Belgium is illegal in this country.” The doctor’s act in inserting a catheter into Van Dongen’s heart “intervened and breaks her responsibility”, he said. However, it said in this case, his choice to die – combined with the actions of the Belgian doctors – amounted to an intervening cause breaking the chain of causation. The defence accepted that if Van Dongen had died after refusing treatment or had taken his own life the “chain of causation” between Wallace’s attack and his death would have been intact. Wallace’s team claimed she did not kill Van Dongen, but that doctors in Belgium did at the request of the victim. The physical and mental suffering he sustained drove him to euthanasia. It claimed that when she threw the acid she intended to cause him serious harm. The prosecution argued there was a direct causal link between Wallace’s act in throwing acid at Mark van Dongen and his decision to end his life by euthanasia. Why was Berlinah Wallace charged with murder? His injuries were so severe that the senior investigating officer, DI Paul Catton, kept the images under lock and key. It was a difficult and upsetting investigation for all concerned. I’ve always been very good with her.”Īs Van Dongen lay in a coma, police began piecing together what had happened. “I always treated her as my own daughter. He said he worked hard on his own relationship with Wallace. I think Mark was more in love with her than the other way round.” “I wasn’t sure about it, but he was in love with her. “I had the impression she was using him,” said his father, a 56-year-old supervisor who lives in Belgium. In around 2010 Van Dongen met and began a relationship with Wallace, a fashion student almost 20 years his senior. Van Dongen did well at university in the Netherlands, his home country, and moved to the UK, studying at Bristol University and then working as an engineer. When he won, four, five marbles and his opponent was crying he would hand them back. When he was a child he used to play marbles. “I often told him: ‘Mark, think about yourself.’ He was actually too good for this world, too kind. “He was a gentle man, everyone’s friend,” he said. I stood by his ear and shouted really loudly, he seemed to come back.” At one point he no longer responded to anything. “I stayed by his bedside all the time,” said Kees van Dongen. When he woke he only had movement in his mouth and tongue and communicated by sticking out his tongue when his father pointed to a letter on an alphabet board.Įventually he regained the power of speech – through a speaking valve – but was paralysed from the neck down. Photograph: Adrian Sherratt/The GuardianĪfter the attack by Wallace, Van Dongen spent four months in a coma in intensive care, fed through a tube and only able to breathe via a ventilator. Kees van Dongen (the father of Mark van Dongen).
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