An Irish family discovered via WhatsApp that their mother had secretly ended her life by assisted suicide in Switzerland and that her ashes would be posted to them, raising concerns that the same thing will happen in England and Wales with Kim Leadbeater’s assisted suicide drive.
Maureen Slough, 58, from Cavan, Ireland, had told her family that she was going on holiday to Lithuania with a friend last month, but instead went to Swiss assisted suicide clinic, Pegasos, to end her life.
According to her daughter, Megan Royal, Maureen had a successful working life after being promoted to the role of executive officer in the civil service before retiring last year. Maureen’s partner, Mick Lynch, described her as being “full of life” after speaking to her on the day of the assisted suicide and had no idea of her plans to end her life. Megan explained that her mother had tried to take her own life last year after two of her sisters had died, believing she was not in her right mind when she decided to end her life in Switzerland.
Megan was reportedly horrified to learn of her mother’s death via a WhatsApp message sent by Pegasos, who told her that her mother’s ashes would be sent by post to her. Both Megan and Mick received “goodbye” letters, handwritten by Maureen, and sent from Switzerland, in the weeks after Maureen’s death.
Megan said “They should not have allowed her to make that decision on her own. This group did not contact me, even though my mother had nominated me as next of kin. They waited until afterwards and then told me she had died listening to an Elvis Presley song”.
Megan said that her mother paid Pegasos €15,000 and travelled alone to the clinic in Switzerland, saying “She had told us she was going to Lithuania, but she had confided in two people that she had other plans, and after a series of concerned phone calls she said she would come home, but then we got the WhatsApp message to say she had died”.
After the family queried Pegasos’s decision to go ahead without informing them, the Pegasos group said it had received a letter from Megan saying she was aware of her mother’s wishes and accepted them. Pegasos also said it verified the letter through an email response to Megan via an email address which Maureen had provided. Megan denies any contact with Pegasos, and the family believe Maureen may have forged the letter and then confirmed it through an email address she had herself created.
Pegasos was at the centre of a similar controversy earlier this year when a British mother, Anne, ended her life at the Pegasos assisted suicide clinic in Switzerland without informing her family.
As Kim Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill is considered in the House of Lords, both Maureen and Anne’s cases raise important questions about how families in the UK would respond to a loved one’s assisted suicide taking place in secret. With no requirement in the Bill to inform or involve family, there is nothing to prevent assisted suicides taking place in secret in England should it become law.
Nikki da Costa, former Director of Legislative Affairs at 10 Downing Street, expressed these sentiments in a post commenting on Anne’s case on X, saying “This is just like Kim [Leadbeater]’s Bill. NO mechanism for family to be told nor raise concerns either before the person’s life is ended or afterwards. Imagine being the parent of a terminally ill 18 year old and finding out afterwards your child chose this to relieve the burden on you?”.