Lauren Dickason, the mother who killed her three children in 2021, reportedly did so out of love.
Also read: Unsettling details reveal how Lauren Dickason killed her children
The latest evidence brought to a New Zealand court outlines how the doctor ‘snapped’ due to long-standing issues with depression, difficulty coping with motherhood, emotional strain from IVF treatment she underwent, an earlier miscarriage and the stress of emigration shortly before her children died.
According to TimesLIVE, Dickason admitted to smothering six-year-old Liane and two-year-old twins Maya and Karla to death. However, she pleaded not guilty to the resulting murder charges because of insanity or infanticide.
In New Zealand, infanticide is regarded as similar to culpable homicide and can be invoked by women who argue that they were temporarily not in the right state of mind due to the stress of childbirth.
Defence lawyer Anne Toohey told the jury that Dickason was suicidal and that her decision to kill her children was impulsive. ‘In her mind, she was killing them out of love because she was killing herself. She did not want to leave her children behind. She was so sure this was the right thing to do that she persisted in killing her children even when Liane asked her not to and reminded her she was a good mother. She had no emotional response to that. Lauren was severely mentally unwell on that night.’
‘For a long time after this happened, Lauren continued to tell psychiatrists that while she felt guilty and remorseful she still felt it was best for her girls that they had died,’ she adds.
On 16 September 2021, Graham Dickason found his children smothered to death in a bedroom, less than a month after his family emigrated from Pretoria so that he could start a new job in Timaru. His wife, Lauren, had overdosed on pills but survived. She was committed to a psychiatric facility after her arrest.
Dickason’s mother, Wendy Fawkes, has started testifying in person at the trial. She noted her concerns about the state of her daughter’s mental health before the emigration and the effect of COVID-19 lockdowns. ‘“I had significant reservations about Graham and Lauren emigrating to New Zealand,’ she says. ‘I was concerned they would lose all their support networks.’
She added that the support was both physical and emotional and included a broad group of family and friends who helped out with the children. She noticed changes in her daughter during the family’s last few weeks in South Africa, she says. ‘She became quiet and stopped communicating as much as she normally would. I was extremely worried about her before she left for New Zealand. I’d never seen her in as bad of a mental state as she was in before they left.’
Dickason had reportedly been struggling with depression for several years, and it is said to have worsened after the birth of the twins. IVF had a major effect on her, as did the loss of her first child, Sarah, at 22 weeks. Fawkes says she would make sure that Dickason was taking her medicine.
She noted that although her daughter was devoted to her children, she struggled with anxiety and was over-protective of them. ‘She found it hard to relax with the children because she was constantly ensuring she had everything covered.’
Also read:
Lauren Dickason, accused of murdering her children, will plead insanity
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