Mother's last day - son charged

Sean Davison, author of 'Before We Say Goodbye'. Photo / Greg Bowker

Sean Davison cared for his mother, Patricia, before her death.

A man who wrote a book about the death of his cancer-stricken mother has been charged with her attempted murder.

Sean Davison, who lives in Cape Town, South Africa, appeared in Dunedin District Court yesterday seeking changes to his bail conditions. He first appeared in court on Friday, but his identity was suppressed until today.

Davison, 48, a professor of biotechnology at the University of the Western Cape in Cape Town, wrote Before We Say Goodbye, detailing the time he spent in Dunedin with his mother, Patricia, in the last months of her life.

It went on sale in June last year.

Mrs Davison, a former doctor and psychiatrist, was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 2004 and died in October 2006, aged 85.

When the book went on sale, Davison said it was deliberately ambiguous about his mother's final moments.

"The book doesn't make it particularly clear deliberately because that's not the message of the book. I didn't want to detract from the desire to stimulate debate [about voluntary euthanasia].

"So it's not clear, and there's no need for it to be clear."

But Davison, who was born in Auckland, admitted to the Herald on Sunday in July last year that he gave his mother a lethal dose of morphine.

He told the newspaper that he had no regrets, saying: "I did the right thing. The compassionate thing."

His mother had repeatedly asked him to help her die while he was caring for her and attempted suicide by starving herself.

In a leaked copy of his original manuscript, Davison said she died hours after he gave her "a lethal drink of crushed morphine tablets dissolved in a glass of water".

"I held it in front of her and said, 'If you drink this you will die'. I really wanted to be so absolutely sure that there was no hesitation.

"She answered, 'You're a wonderful son'."

The passage, which Davison verified to the Herald on Sunday as authentic, was left out of the published book.

After hearing about the admission, Dunedin police said they would look into thematter.

When approached by the Otago Daily Times yesterday, Davison declined to be interviewed.

Judge Alayne Wills yesterday remanded him for a pre-committal hearing on November 16, and amended the address to which he was bailed from a hotel to a Kaikorai Valley address and required him to report once a week to police.

- OTAGO DAILY TIMES