WARNING: This story contains graphic and sensitive content.
After her three children were born, Lauren Dickason felt “alienated” from her husband, whose attention was often focused on the little girls rather than his wife - and her feelings “often” turned to “anger”.
That’s what she told a psychiatric expert tasked by the Crown to assess her mental state after she smothered her three children to death.
The court has already heard Dr Erik Monasterio supports the Crown’s case of murder - opining Dickason was not insane at the time and the case is not one of infanticide, where a woman is so disturbed as a result of childbirth she cannot be held fully responsible for killing her child.
But his full evidence began this afternoon.
Dickason, 42, is charged with murdering Liane, 6, and 2-year-old twins Maya and Karla at their Timaru home in September 2021.
The family had emigrated from South Africa to New Zealand weeks earlier.
While Dickason admits she killed the children, she has pleaded not guilty to the murder charges by reason of insanity or infanticide.
Today the Crown called its first expert witness - consultant forensic psychiatrist Monasterio, who has almost 30 years of experience in his field.
He is a specialist assessor, and between 2015 and 2021 he was clinical director and director of area mental health services for the Canterbury Regional Forensic Service.
He has experience in hundreds of homicides, including specific insanity and infanticide cases.
He said his duty in all cases was “to the court” and he did not “favour”.
“You will get my opinion - irrespective of whether I am instructed by the court, the defence or the prosecution,” he said.
He said the optimal time to see an accused like Dickason was “as early as feasible” and as soon as they were fit to do so.
He began by assessing Dickason’s specific personality and traits.
He said anxiety and depression were common conditions, so it was vital to see how those conditions affected Dickason individually.
Monasterio told the jury he aimed to carry out his analysis of Dickason “meticulously”, which meant carving a clinical relationship with her where she was comfortable and not “distressed or suspicious” so he could get the information he needed to make a full and informed opinion.
He interviewed Dickason four times - spanning about nine hours - and was reassured by her medical team before and after each session that she was “coping okay” with his questioning and information-gathering style.
“Every step must be taken to rigorously examine the circumstances around the offending,” he said.
“Context is important.”
Alongside the interviews with Dickason, Monasterio was privy to “a considerable number of sources of information”, including police and medical reports from both New Zealand and South Africa.
He was given access to police interviews with Dickason and her husband along with social media posts and messages sent to and from the accused.
A number of letters DIckason wrote to various people from custody were also supplied to Monasterio, as well as the reports provided to the court from the other psychiatric experts with their opinions.
The accused gave consent to Monasterio to speak to her parents and others close to her as he formed his expert opinion.
Dickason told Monasterio that by age 15, she had “persistent mood and anxiety” issues and was diagnosed with depression.
During the early years of their relationship, Graham Dickason - whom she met at medical school - was her “rock” and “helped her to mostly overcome her depression and anxiety”.
She told Monasterio her mental health began to suffer again when she was trying to start a family.
Earlier in her trial, the jury heard Dickason underwent nine rounds of IVF and lost a baby girl before she conceived Liane using a donor egg.
During her pregnancy, she was constantly worried and she advised she struggled to bond with Liane.
However, not wanting the little girl to be an only child, she went ahead with another round of IVF and became pregnant with the twins.
She spoke again of struggling to bond with the children and said she had love for her children but “a difficulty with emotional warmth”.
The children often favoured their father, and Dickason reported she “felt rejected” and that “often turned to anger” - however, she always wanted the best for the girls and worked hard to provide a good and structured life for them.
Monasterio said Graham Dickason’s priorities shifted towards the children, leading to Dickason feeling “alienated” after a “loss of intimacy” and “support” for her mental health.
He referred to messaging evidence presented to the court earlier in the trial.
He said to him, the messages show a woman who had “steady improvement in her mood” as she began to participate in a wellness programme that focused on nutrition and fitness.
It had allowed her to reduce a “tranquilising” medication she had been taking, and as she continued she experienced a “consistent and sustained improvement by her mood” and “slowly decreased” her antidepressant intake.
He said while her mood improved, Dickason still clearly struggled with parenting, managing her children and her relationship with her husband.
“She felt more optimistic about the future and no longer experienced episodes of tearfulness and overwhelmed feelings,” Monasterio said.
“Despite improvement in mood and functioning, she continued to struggle with the children... there were frequent episodes of disruptive behaviour, mainly from the twins but also from Liane.”
Monasterio said Dickason and her husband clashed with parenting styles - with him being more “permissive” - which led to the girls “favouring” their dad.
“The impact of the children’s unsettled behaviour was such that she found it very difficult to have any time alone with Graham, and that was more severe when she and Graham slept in separate rooms,” he said.
The court heard the children could not sleep without their father in the room and the couple began to sleep apart.
Monasterio said by mid-July 2021, Dickason “experienced a significant deterioration in her mood” as strict lockdowns took over South Africa forcing schools to close.
Unrest in the country, looting and riots “terrified” the woman, and she told Monasterio she began to pull back from people.
Her “withdrawal” led the children to “gravitate” to their father.
“I felt ignored and unappreciated,” she told Monasterio.
“These feelings became more prominent when she saw the children playing happily with Graham and seemingly exhibiting episodes of anger towards her,” the expert said.
She also reported comments from her husband’s mother made her feel like an inadequate mother.
Monasterio spoke to Dickason about her marriage.
In the first three interviews, she reported “a positive relationship” with Graham Dickason.
But in the last interview, she told Monasterio she wanted to change aspects of her disclosure.
“She reported she made considerable sacrifices through their marriage to ensure that Graham continued to pursue weekends away hunting and with friends,” he said.
“That was a significant factor in her feeling overwhelmed.”
Dickason told Monasterio she had reported thoughts of harming the children to her husband, who became “angry” and “raised concerns about [her] parenting and ability to cope”.
She claimed she told Graham Dickason she had “concerns about moving to New Zealand”.
After that, she felt his “disapproval and anger” was such that she felt she was “not able to confide in him again”.
As a result, Dickason did not tell anyone when she had further thoughts of harming the girls - in particular, one incident two days before the family left Pretoria.
In her final interview with Monasterio - though not disclosed at any earlier meetings - Dickason said she’d had “thoughts of strangling the children” and “connected a number of cable ties together”.
She claimed the episode lasted about 15 minutes.
Monasterio revealed what Graham Dickason told him during their interview.
He said his wife was “always vulnerable to stress” and struggled with depression and anxiety, particularly in the postpartum periods.
Her mood resulted in the children naturally gravitating towards him.
In 2021, Dickason’s mood was “good and positive’, her husband reported.
“Graham reported that he noticed deterioration in the defendant’s mood in July 2021 in the context of the mounting stresses and in anticipation and the delay of their travel to New Zealand,” Monasterio said.
“He did not feel the depression was that severe.”
Dickason believed his wife was managing okay and while he knew she was stressed, there were no blaring red flags.
Monasterio told the court that at no point was Dickason diagnosed with any form of psychosis.
She told him that she had “recurrent” bouts of depression since her teenage years, during which time she had morbid and suicidal thoughts - but never any plans or intent to end her life.
While her mental health was “enhanced” when she met her husband, there was “insidious deterioration” when they could not conceive naturally, leaving her with feelings of guilt and failure.
Monasterio’s evidence continues tomorrow.
The court has already been told that he found no grounds for insanity or infanticide - and supports the Crown allegation of murder.
Lauren Anne Dickason is on trial in the High Court at Christchurch before Justice Cameron Mander and a jury of eight women and four men.
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, it maintains she knew what she was doing when she killed the girls.
Last week, Crown Prosecutor Andrew 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”.
The trial continues.
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