WARNING: This story contains graphic and sensitive content.
Lauren Dickason told a psychologist she thought killing her three little girls would be “a happy ending for everyone” after the family made the “huge mistake” of emigrating to New Zealand.
Her world was “falling apart” and she was “unravelling”, and she was convinced death for her and her children was the only way out of a “helpless and hopeless” situation.
And he says while the killings were brutal, callous, determined and deliberate - Dickason cannot be held criminally responsible.
“I do not consider that Miss Dickason’s mental state at the time of the alleged offending precluded her from understanding the nature and quality of the acts,” said forensic psychologist Ghazi Metoui.
“To the contrary, I consider that she was purposeful and deliberate throughout her offending and acted with full conscious awareness of her actions and with great determination to pursue her aims, the killing of her three young children.
“However, such was the severity of her depressive illness and associated distorted thinking at that time ... that ultimately, she thought she and her three children were better off dead.
“It is my opinion that she did not know that the alleged acts were morally wrong to the commonly accepted standard of right and wrong ... she has a defence of insanity.”
The final witness is today giving evidence in the trial of Lauren Dickason, the woman accused of murdering her three little girls at their Timaru home.
But the trial will not end until at least next week.
This morning, Justice Cameron Mander at the High Court in Christchurch told the jury of eight men and four women the last witness will be on the stand for the rest of today and likely much of tomorrow.
It is expected the Crown and defence will give final closing addresses on Friday and Justice Mander will sum up the entire trial for the jury on Monday before giving them instructions and sending them to deliberate.
Monday will mark the fifth week the jury has been hearing the case against Dickason.
The 42-year-old admits killing her three daughters - Liane, 6, and 2-year-old twins Maya and Karla - by smothering them to death at their Timaru home in September 2021.
But she denies it was murder and has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity or infanticide.
This afternoon, Metoui was called to give evidence in support of the defence.
He is the last witness to be called in the trial.
Metoui told the court he interviewed Dickason nine times - for about 20 hours in total.
He then provided a 69-page report to the court about his assessment and conclusion.
“My opinion was that a defence of infanticide was available to Mrs Dickason,” he told the court.
“My opinion was that a defence of insanity was available to Mrs Dickason.”
Defence lawyer Anne Toohey said Metoui’s report contained more information on Dickason’s mental health and personal history than any of the others.
She was more open with him about her issues, the court heard, admitting that during her gruelling fertility journey - which included 17 rounds of IVF and a loss of a baby at 18 weeks gestation before turning to donor eggs - was much harder on her than she let on.
She said she felt “isolated and alone”, and while her husband Graham and friends were supported, she battled much harder than anyone knew.
“She concealed her mental health struggles,” said Metoui of the period after Dickason gave birth to Liane.
“She said, ‘I wasn’t completely honest with him in terms of how I was feeling - I didn’t want to be ungrateful after having this baby after all these years.”
Her pregnancy with Liane was wracked with worry, but when she fell pregnant with the twins, things were better.
But when the couple were told Karla had a cleft palate, she began to worry and suffer “anxiety”.
She said she desperately wanted all of her children, and while the pregnancies were scary, she also felt happiness, pride and joy at the impending arrivals.
Metoui said “overall”, the Dickason’s marriage was “harmonious and stable”, and while having children impacted their once-free social life, they were content.
She told Metoui “all went well for the first five months” after the twins arrived, helped by the fact she had hired a night nanny and was on antidepressants.
The antidepressants were prescribed the day after the twins were born when Dickason had a complication and was “hysterical” and worried she would “die and leave the girls without a mother”.
But when the family got home with the babies and they met an “enraptured” Liane, her “mental health was good and she was bonding with the girls ‘okay’”.
Soon, though, Dickason’s “mood began to decline”.
“She began to feel exhausted with reduced energy ... she began to feel depressed again, she felt lonely as her life was centred around the home routine ... she felt incredibly isolated,” said Metoui.
She felt “trapped” by motherhood and envied her husband’s life away from home, and Metoui said that is when the spiral to the alleged murders really began.
He said Dickason told him: “I had thoughts that it would be nice to not have the twins for a couple of days. I thought about hurting them. I thought it would be nice to have them gone.”
She was “deeply concerned” and told Graham Dickason, who reacted angrily.
She felt “immense shame and guilt” and like she was “a failure”.
Dickason tried to carry on as normal and tried to get out of the house with the children as much as possible.
“Even though she continued to feel depressed - she functioned as best she could and got through her days ... her mood began to improve.”
In early 2020, the couple decided to embark on a move overseas for a better and safer life for the children.
“All was going well until the Covid-19 pandemic ... and lockdown ...” Metoui told the jury.
“She said ... it felt like infertility all over again ... the uncertainty...”
From May 2020, she felt “depressed and anxious”, and by September, her “mental health was not good”.
She embarked on a health and wellness programme, and by early 2021 she “felt the best she could recall herself feeling in years” and “subsequently decided to stop her antidepressants”.
She did this without speaking to her doctor.
“She also thought that by being off her antidepressants, it would be seen more favourably by the New Zealand immigration authorities,” Metoui said.
Dickason said during this time, her relationship with Graham was “the best it had been” and she was “immensely enjoying her children”.
Her whole family was happy, she reached her “goal weight” and she felt “euphoric”.
When riots and looting broke out in South Africa, Dickason began to crumble mentally and Metoui said she was having “catastrophic” thinking.
Her depression set in again, deeply.
“Her mood never recovered from that time onwards, deteriorating all the time and never improving,” said Metoui.
One night while reading the girls a story, she had another thought of harming them.
“I had images of giving the kids sleeping tablets and taking them one-by-one to the bath, cutting their femoral artery and bleeding them out - then tucking them in their beds,” she told Metoui.
She said the thoughts were terrifying - but did not change the love she had for the girls.
In the lead-up to the family’s move, Dickason became “severely anxious” and she stopped communicating with friends.
She had “panic attacks” and began to take her antidepressants again on August 3.
She continued to feel “very low in her mood”, saying it was “the worst she had ever felt”, but her “homicidal” ruminations about the children were no longer in her thoughts.
“I did rethink it, and I never thought I’d do something like that,” she said about thoughts.
“I’d never act on it.”
However, days before the family flew to New Zealand, she “had thoughts of doing what ended up happening” - using cable ties to strangle the girls.
“This devil on my shoulder came ... ‘This could be a way’ - I felt like the seed was planted that day,” she told Metoui.
She did not act on the thought.
However, later she connected several cable ties together, thinking she would need more than one to fit around the girls’ necks.
She told the psychologist: “I thought, ‘What the hell am I doing?’ I threw them in a drawer, pushed it to the back of my mind.”
In the week she spent in Timaru before the alleged murders, she felt anxious, overwhelmed, “miserable and alone” and that she had lost her connection with God, which upset her.
She messaged a friend and said she wanted to go back to South Africa, and said words to a similar effect to her husband.
She felt that angered him and she was not allowed to feel the way she did.
The day the children died, the family’s immigration advisor sought more detailed information about Dickason’s mental health diagnosis and history.
Metoui said at the point Dickason knew she was “so acutely unwell” and the prospect of having to be assessed by a doctor in New Zealand for her visa was “the straw that broke the camel’s back”.
“I knew psychiatrists in New Zealand would lock me up, that I wouldn’t get a favourable report. If I saw a psychiatrist, I couldn’t hide it,” she told Metoui.
Dickason lay in bed for hours “feeling nauseous and unable to move”.
“I felt like my world was falling apart,” she recalled.
Metouis said she began to have “negative ruminations” about her and her family’s futures and thought “I don’t know how I’m going to live”.
If her family could not get residency, they would face more uncertainty - similar to the period before they were approved to come to Timaru.
“That was a scenario she was no longer able to cope with,” Metouis said.
She told him: “I was so out of control trying to figure out in my head how to get back to South Africa. My thoughts were so disordered … Everything was unravelling.
“I didn’t want to hurt my children - I wanted them to be with me … I was feeling we’d make a huge mistake … impossible to extricate from … I felt helpless and hopeless.”
Her husband went out that night just before 7pm.
She said she had no plan at that stage to kill the children or herself - but the thoughts in her head about hurting the kids were relentless and “there was so much noise”.
She said nothing to Graham, and when she bid him farewell, she felt it was the last time she’d speak to him.
Minutes later, Karla threw a tantrum and started to bite Dickason’s clothing.
Dickason got “tunnel vision” and decided she could not live another day.
She told Metouis she was “totally out of control and finished”.
“I felt like I was going to explode … I wanted everything to end,” she said.
“Everything was failing.”
Dickason gathered the girls in a bedroom to “contain them” as she did not want to be running around after them.
She said: “I didn’t want to leave them without a mum, I loved them too much”.
One by one, she put cable ties around the girls’ necks.
That did not work, and she smothered them to death with blankets.
As Metoui recalled her actions, Dickason sat in court with her head in her hands, bereft and audibly crying, prompting her lawyer to ask if she needed a break.
The detail Dickason gave Metoui about the alleged murders is the most detail regarding the event the court has heard.
Much of the information has been suppressed.
After she killed the girls, she picked them up and put them in their beds and tucked them in “with their blankets, how they always slept’.
“I loved them, I wanted to tuck them in one last time,” she told Metouis.
She was “drenched in sweat” and shaking.
She changed into her pyjamas and told herself to “calm down because I needed to take my own life”.
Dickason tried two methods to commit suicide, and when they were not successful, she tried to overdose on whatever medication she could find in the house.
“The last thing I remember doing is lying down with Liane,” she said.
“I was just glad it was all going to end.”
She told Metouis she knew she “only had limited time” before her husband was going home.
She cleaned up the house, turned the lights off and hoped he would realise what had happened until the next day.
She hoped that “this was somehow kinder on Graham”.
Metouis said Dickason covered the girls so she “didn’t have to see their faces”.
“I didn’t want to remember those images … too traumatic,” she said.
“It was meant to be a happy ending for everyone, but it’s not a happy ending.”
Metoui said the felt Dickason’s depression was connected to the loss of her first baby daughter and the birth of the twins.
He said the depression was “ongoing” and she was on a downward slope well before the family moved to New Zealand.
Her postnatal depression was “on the more severe end of the spectrum” and she had “pretty profound problems”.
Given that, he would not be satisfied she was in “full remission” until there had been a six to 12-month period without symptoms.
He agreed while at points Dickason “improved” before emigrating to New Zealand - it would not be “best practice” to say she was in remission before a lengthy period of stability.
Metoui said Dickason spiralled dramatically in the months before the alleged murders.
People around her, including her husband, noticed dramatic changes in her and knew she was depressed, but “simply did not recognise its insidious nature”.
She was stressed and “in a state of emotional sufferance”.
Her children’s behaviour - very normal for little girls their ages - became “all but intolerable for her”.
Her feeling she was failing as a mother compounded when she got to Timaru.
She became consumed with negative thoughts and catastrophised every part of her life.
Metoui said Dickason effectively saw no other way out, no other option and could not switch her negative thoughts off when she carried out the “brutal, violent, callous and sustained” killings.
He told the court firmly he believed she had a defence of insanity.
Further, he said the defence of infanticide was clear to him.
“Mrs Dickason has a history of postpartum depression following the birth of both Liane and Karla and Maya,” he said.
“My opinion is that her problems with depression in the 11-year period leading up to her alleged offending were very much embroiled in her fertility problems, losing her first child at 18 weeks gestation, antenatal anxiety and then postnatal depression that remained chronic - clinically referred to as the intermittent symptom pattern.
“She always had vulnerabilities in her earlier life since adolescence in her early 20s, and these in themselves are risk factors for developing postpartum depression.
“The fact is that declines in her mental health all occurred after 2010 from the time of trying to conceive to eventually having children.”
Metoui said Dickason’s family said she “never returned to her baseline mental health” after her first baby died.
“I therefore consider on a balance of probabilities that her major depressive disorder - severe type - at the time of the alleged offending was an extension and part of her chronic postnatal depression since 2015 after having Liane and re-emerging in 2019 after having Karla and Maya and episodically thereafter.
“I consider that the balance of Mrs Dickason’s mind at the time was disturbed by this specific disorder consequent upon childbirth ... she meets the medical and legal threshold for infanticide.”
Metoui’s evidence continues tomorrow.
It follows four other psychiatric experts - two for the Crown and two others for the defence.
The Crown alleges Dickason murdered the children in a “calculated” way because she was frustrated, angry and resentful of them.
It acknowledges Dickason suffered from sometimes-serious depression, but maintains she knew what she was doing when she killed the girls.
Opening the Crown case on July 1, McRae alleged Dickason was an angry and frustrated woman who was “resentful of how the children stood in the way of her relationship with her husband” and killed them “methodically and purposefully, perhaps even clinically”.
The defence says Dickason was a severely mentally disturbed woman in the depths of postpartum depression and did not know the act of killing the children was morally wrong at the time of their deaths.
Further, it says she was “in such a dark place” she had decided to kill herself and felt “it was the right thing to do” to “take the girls with her”.
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