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Toxic Love: The Mark Van Dongen Story

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05/06/2018

BBC Radio 4 - Toxic Love: The Mark Van Dongen Story

The inside story of the acid attack that led to the victim ending his life by euthanasia.

Charlotte Callen reveals the inside story of the acid attack that occurred just metres from her front door.

Mark van Dongen, 29, was left paralysed from the neck down and lost his left leg, ear and eye following an acid attack carried out by his ex-girlfriend, Berlinah Wallace in September 2015. He chose to have his life brought to an end in a Belgian clinic 15 months later, having decided he could not face a life of pain. 

Early on the morning of 23rd September 2015, BBC reporter Charlotte Callen was woken by the terrifying screams of her neighbour outside her bedroom window. The events of that night in a quiet Bristol neighbourhood would eventually result in a court case in which Wallace would be charged not just with throwing the acid, but with murder. Wallace was found guilty of throwing a corrosive substance with intent but cleared of both murder and manslaughter.

Having been one of the first on the scene the BBC's Home Affairs Correspondent for the West of England, Charlotte has been reporting on the case since the attack, getting to know Mark's family and following their journey through the British legal system.

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