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A global expert who “literally wrote the book” on how to carry out psychiatric evaluations of mothers who have killed their children will be called to give evidence in support of triple murder-accused mum Lauren Dickason’s defence of insanity or infanticide as her High Court trial continues today.
Dickason is accused of murdering her three little girls at their Timaru home in September 2021 but claims she was so mentally disturbed at the time she cannot be held responsible for the deaths.
This morning Dr Susan Hatters-Friedman will give evidence supporting the defence.
“This case is not just about depression, it’s about postpartum depression and a mother who killed three children,” she said.
“The leading world expert on this phenomenon is Dr Susan Hatters Friedman. She is a world-renowned forensic psychiatrist. She is also a reproductive psychiatrist.
“And that means she is an expert on mental disorders flowing from all things from infertility to childbirth and beyond.
“She has published numerous peer-reviewed articles on why parents killed their children. It’s called filicide.
“She literally wrote the book on how to do psychiatric evaluations of mothers who have killed their children.”
Dickason, 42, is on trial in the High Court at Christchurch charged with murdering her daughters Liané - who was a week from her 7th birthday - and 2-year-old twins Maya and Karla.
The sisters were found dead in their beds by their father Graham Dickason when he returned home from a work function.
The family had only been in New Zealand for a matter of weeks after emigrating from South Africa.
Dickason admits smothering the children to death, but has pleaded not guilty to the murder charges by reason of insanity or infanticide.
While the Crown 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 refutes that, saying Dickason was a loving mother who had spiralled deep into postpartum depression and was in such a “dark place” that she felt her only option was to commit suicide and take her children with her.
“All of the defence experts agree that there was an altruistic motive… That means that Lauren killed her children out of love,” Toohey told the jury yesterday in the defence opening address.
“In her mind, she was killing them out of love - she was killing herself and she didn’t want to leave the children… she was so sure this was the right thing to do she persisted.
“This is about postpartum depression and a mother who killed her children. She did not want to leave her children without a mum… she also did not want her children to suffer from having such a bad mother.”
Hatters-Friedman is one of three experts that will give evidence for the defence.
Two others will give evidence for the Crown.
“If you find that Lauren’s mind was disturbed at the time this happened due to postpartum depression - then this is not murder it’s infanticide,” Toohey said yesterday.
“And if she didn’t know what she was doing was morally wrong that night then she is not guilty of murder or infant that is insanity.”
The trial, before Justice Cameron Mander, is expected to run for at least one more week.
By Anna Leask
