He asked and obtained to die by euthanasia to put an end to an "irreversible psychological suffering".
Geneviève Lhermitte , was 56 years old and in 2007, in Nivelles, Belgium, she had stabbed to death her five children, the youngest 3 years old, the eldest 15 years old.
After her arrest she was sentenced to life imprisonment and now she is back on the front pages of the newspapers for the decision to put an end to her days , with an injection that was given to her at the Leonardo da Vinci hospital in Montigny-le-Tilleul, in under a law which has been applied in Belgium since 2002.
According to what was ascertained by the investigation, Lhermitte, who had left his job as a teacher years earlier to devote himself completely to his family, was suffering from severe depression at the time of the tragedy and had been under the care of a psychiatrist for six years.
At the end of the massacre he tried unsuccessfully to take his own life, shortly before leaving a letter addressed to a friend in which he explained that he was in an "inextricable" situation.
In December 2008, the Nivelles court sentenced her to life imprisonment, finding her capable of understanding and guilty of premeditated murder, also following the discovery of a letter that the woman had written to her psychologist the day before the murders in which she revealed the his plans to commit suicide and take his children with him.
A second analysis indicated that the woman could not be held responsible for her actions, recommending her admission to a psychiatric clinic.
After being sentenced to life imprisonment she had benefited from parole precisely to be subjected to psychiatric treatment.
The euthanasia granted to Lhermitte is the second case highlighted in the space of a few days by the national press : another Belgian woman, Nathalie Huygens , mother of two children, obtained the authorization to end her life for suffering psychological problems caused by a rape that took place in 2016 in Vilvoord and that no therapy has managed to alleviate.
(Unioneonline/lf)