Lauren Dickason presents her defence, her mother says emigration meant she lost her support network

Lauren Dickason was acting out of love when she killed her six-year-old daughter Liane and two-year-old twins Maya and Karla in 2021, her defence says.

Evidence is being led in a New Zealand court that the doctor “snapped” due to her problems with long-standing depression, difficulty in coping with motherhood, emotional strain from the IVF treatment she required to become pregnant, an earlier miscarriage and the stress of emigration shortly before the triple murder.

Dickason admitted smothering the children to death, but has pleaded not guilty to the murder charges by reason of insanity or infanticide. Under New Zealand law, infanticide is a crime similar to culpable homicide and can be invoked by women who argue their minds were temporarily “disturbed” by the stress of childbirth.

New Zealand media outlets including 1News, Stuff and RNZ are reporting on the defence case on Wednesday.

Defence lawyer Anne Toohey told the jury Dickason was suicidal and 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.”

Graham Dickason, an orthopaedic surgeon who was about to begin a new job in Timaru, found the children smothered to death in a bedroom on September 16 2021, less than a month after they emigrated from Pretoria. His wife had taken an overdose of pills but survived.

Dickason was committed to a psychiatric hospital after her arrest.

“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,” Toohey said.

Wendy Fawkes, Dickason's mother, has started testifying in person at the trial, speaking of her concerns about her daughter's mental health before the emigration and the isolation of Covid-19 lockdowns which went on for nearly a year.

“I had significant reservations about Graham and Lauren emigrating to New Zealand. I was concerned they would lose all their support networks,” she said.

The support was both physical and emotional from a wide group of family and friends, Fawkes said, which included being able to help out with the children.

There were changes in Dickason in the last weeks in South Africa, her mother said.

“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”.

Before that, IVF had a huge effect on her daughter and she was haunted by the loss of their first child Sarah at 22 weeks. Dickason's depression worsened after the birth of the twins. Her mother said she would make sure she was taking her medicine and try to help her feel better.

As a mother, Dickason was devoted to the children but struggled with anxiety and was over-protective of them, Fawkes said.

“She found it hard to relax with the children because she was constantly ensuring she had everything covered.”

The case continues.

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