‘I was made a scapegoat’
Suzy Austen says 50 others were caught importing euthanasia drug but she was first prosecuted,
Euthanasia is a divisive issue, but no matter what side of the debate you sit on, it’s difficult to dislike Suzy Austen.
You may remember her name, or her face. Just the other day, a stranger in the supermarket hugged her, recognising Austen as the woman found guilty last year of importing the euthanasia drug pentobarbitone.
The head of the Wellington branch of Exit International, a proeuthanasia group, the 67-year-old has a lot of supporters — friends who packed out the public gallery in the High Court at Wellington for every court appearance she went through while facing a charge of helping fellow euthanasia advocate AnneMarie Treadwell commit suicide.
Austen was found not guilty of that, though found guilty after a trial in February on two counts of importing pentobarbitone, the euthanasia drug that Treadwell, 77, overdosed on in June 2016. For the importation offences, Austen was convicted and fined $7500.
Sitting in her Lower Hutt home, the retired teacher said she didn’t feel that she was a criminal.
Warm and kind, she chats to me about gardening — she set herself a personal goal to start liking it — her artistic projects, and how she felt bad for the police officers who would have had to scour her Christmas decorations during a search of her home after she was caught in a carpark with two bags of pentobarbitone.
We’re here to discuss something serious, but in between it all she shares dieting tips and describes how she and her husband, Mike Harris, better known as Jolly Mike, sometimes buy $1 scratchies on Christmas Eve and hand them out to strangers in hospitals.
She has spent years volunteering, including for Victim Support, Rape Crisis, 13 years at the Women’s Refuge, six years on the crisis lifeline, work for Alzheimers NZ, Habitat for Humanity and the Ropata Village Hall.
A conviction has stopped her from travelling to the UK, but it hasn’t changed how she views herself.
“I don’t feel any different really that way. I believe I was made a scapegoat.”
Austen bases this on the fact more than 50 others have been caught importing the drug in the past 10 years, but she was the first prosecuted.
She remains tight-lipped about the actual offending. When asked if she regrets it, she says only: “I never said that I imported it.”
Regardless, the events that prompted the investigation and the stress of the trial haven’t changed her feelings on the issue. Austen believes in the End of Life Choice Bill, which proposes people can request medically assisted dying if they have a terminal illness likely to end their life within six months, or a grievous and irremediable medical condition.
They must also have significantly lost the ability to live a full life, be experiencing unbearable suffering that cannot be relieved in a tolerable way, and have the ability to understand the nature of assisted dying, and the consequences.
Treadwell did not go through these steps before her death. She did not have a terminal illness, though she had arthritis and dealt with depression for more than two decades.
During Austen’s trial, defence lawyer Dr Donald Stevens QC said she did not intend that Treadwell should commit suicide, “but assisted her to obtain the pentobarbital. She intended that Mrs Treadwell should have control over her end of life issue — having that [drug] could have had a profound palliative effect to reduce suffering.”
Austen told the Herald she felt “very sad” when she heard of Treadwell’s death.
“But I also knew, because she’d told many people that that’s what she’d like to do. She did not want to carry on living.”
But Treadwell presumably did not meet the End of Life Choice Bill criteria — should people in her situation still have access to legal euthanasia? Austen said she did not want to answer, “because it’s not for me to make the decision”.
She first became interested in the issue in her 30s, when she read a book called Jean’s Way by Derek Humphry, about his terminally ill wife’s planned suicide.
“It just seemed so logical that when life has become unbearable for you, the pain, the suffering, then you should be able to have a choice to ask for [assisted dying].”
Austen quit her role as a teacher in her 50s to care for her mother who moved from home to resthome to hospital-level care more than 13 years before she died.
Austen doesn’t quite know why she believes in euthanasia so strongly.
“I believe that in many things that have happened in New Zealand society that it’s a natural progress. And it is progress, I believe, not a degeneration into murdering people. This is absolutely atrocious scaremongering. It’s not like that at all.”
Having the option to end their life in a peaceful way gave people peace of mind, which often was all they wanted.
“They have the ability to shorten their lives and they don’t use it, because the comfort is there, and not the fear of how horrendous their dying may be.”
She said there was a clear difference between suicide and euthanasia.
“People who end their own lives through distress and despair and
desperation is tragic, absolutely tragic. People who end their lives with assisted dying are doing it in such a different way and for a different reason. All you have to do is look at the bereaved.”
Those left behind after a suicide were often traumatised and spent years trying to get past it. Those whose loved ones had chosen a medically assisted death still grieved, but were prepared and often felt peace: “Just look at the two of them and you’ll see the difference between a suicide and assisted dying.”
Life has changed somewhat for Austen since court. Exit Wellington members no longer feel safe holding meetings in her house, after police bugged the Maungaraki home and set up an illegal road stop to collect information about attendees.
“Even just for casual visits they still feel a bit nervous and ask ‘is it still bugged?’”
On the flipside, Austen has become well-known among euthanasia groups.
“Because of my, dare I say it, ‘notoriety’, I have been invited to go and talk to various groups . . . about my experience and also about what I believe in.”
Austen encourages all those who support euthanasia to contact their local MP and tell them so.
She hasn’t had any negative comments from the public, aside from one woman who called her in the middle of the night during the trial to swear at her.
For the most part, Austen is able to find a mutual respect with those against euthanasia.
“My sister does not support End of Life Choice but my relationship with her is just as wonderful. People respect me and what I believe, the same as I respect them.”
A conversation about death wouldn’t be complete without the big question: does Austen believe in a life after this one?
“No, I don’t — apart from your children and your grandchildren and hopefully your garden.”
The End of Life Choice Bill, a member’s bill sponsored by Act leader David Seymour, received a record 37,000 submissions, which the Justice Select Committee is going through before it reports back to Parliament on March 27 with findings and recommendations.
Executive director of Euthanasia Free NZ Renee Joubert said in countries where euthanasia was legal, systems failed to protect the vulnerable.
“Even people who are in the system in those countries agree that the law is out of control and that safeguards aren’t working,” she said.
Joubert pointed to one submission in which a woman said she believed her 26-year-old son was “coached” into suicide by Exit International, despite having no illness aside from depression.
In the submission, Melbourne mother Judith Taylor said her son joined the group and paid a membership fee to access a forum containing discussions on methods of suicide. She said there were no safeguards to protect people from “zealots” obsessed with facilitating death.
Joubert also spoke about Dutch ethicist Dr Theo Boer, who supported the decision to legalise euthanasia in the Netherlands. He has now withdrawn his support and is warning other countries against it.
In an oral submission, Boer said numbers being euthanised had risen sharply, and violent suicides had also risen.
“I am deeply convinced that this leaning towards death increasingly influences severely impaired, deeply suffering, and elderly people to consider active killing as their only way out,” he said.
H To watch a video go to nzherald.co.n