Five things we learnt during Lauren Dickason’s first week of trial
The trial of a woman accused of the murder of her three children has concluded its first week.
South African doctor Lauren Anne Dickason, 43, denies charges of murdering her twin daughters Maya and Karla, 2, and their older sister Liané, 6, on the night of September 16, 2021, in Timaru.
A Christchurch jury will have to decide if she murdered the three children in cold blood, or if she was insane at the time, or experiencing a “disease of the mind” as a result of childbirth.
I believe in certain circumstances, I could kill another human being.
I believe I have the capacity to kill another in self defence to stop them harming my family, friends, whanau, even strangers in the street.
Funnily enough I’m not sure I could kill another if they were attacking me, but a person attacking someone weaker than them or hurting my whanau, oh I can without a shadow of a doubt opt for the capacity to kill.
Knowing that about myself enables me to step into the shoes of others who find themselves in those circumstances and seek understanding.
However, I don’t know what the Christ to think about Lauren Anne Dickason.
Harming children is an abomination to me, there is no situation where I could harm a child, I have no understanding, no sense of empathy, no possible entry point into the horror she committed by murdering her own 3 daughters.
I want to believe she was so mentally unwell she crossed a line only the criminally insane can manage because the alternative is so much more monstrous, I just don’t want to contemplate it.
But it hasn’t been the Mad Murdering Mother that I have been focused on, there is a far more grim, far more bitter Court case occurring at the same time that manages to sum up all that is truly malignant and obscene in NZ and demands we ask questions of ourselves.
It’s a case that has frightened me, because while I am morally, ethically and philosophically opposed to the death penalty, I have never wished it so strongly on these two fucking maggots…
…I know, I know, I know.
I shouldn’t want their harm, I don’t want to feel so offended that their necks broken by hanging is all I want when I see their stupid blank bullshit faces trying to minimise the magnitude of repugnance for their abhorrence.
But I do.
Sweet Jesus forgive me, but I do.
These despicable pieces of filth tortured a teenager, forced that teenager to select their own death, stuffed the body into a drum and left it at a vacant state house.
Nothing sums up the wasteland of Aotearoa New Zealand with the vomit inducing gag reflex that the dreadful murder of Dimetrius Pairama…
Days after the body of 17-year-old Dimetrius “Precious” Pairama was found concealed in a rusted steel drum outside an abandoned South Auckland state home, a 16-year-old who had helped torture her and had helped to dump her body told a youth worker that she was having trouble with nightmares.
It was suggested she might find it easier to sleep if she wrote her feelings down on paper, which she did.
Those words were read to jurors today at her murder trial.
“The reason why I beat up Dimetrius is because she was talking shit about me,” the 16-year-old revealed via bubbly handwriting in a half page of uncompleted text. “She was telling the other girls that I’m ugly and I have a lot of pimples on my face.
“It made me angry [because] I would never talk shit about her or do anything to hurt her feeling[s] but I was shocked when I heard what she had been saying about me.”
The defendant, now 21 years old, has been on trial for three weeks in the High Court at Auckland – the final of three people who were charged with murder after Pairama’s horrific July 2018 death.
She has acknowledged she was one of four people in the Māngere house when prosecutors say Pairama was repeatedly punched and stomped, forced to disrobe and tied naked to a chair with soiled underwear stuffed into her mouth, burned on sensitive areas of her body with a makeshift blowtorch, had household chemicals poured on top of her, burning her eyes, and was ultimately forced to choose the method of her murder: hanging or stabbing.
Ashley Winter, then 27, and co-defendant Kerry Te Amo, 24, were found guilty by a jury the following year. The current defendant did not join the pair at that trial. She continues to have name suppression, as does a 14-year-old who also hit Pairama and served as a lookout during her hanging but was given immunity in exchange for her co-operation with police.
…to torture a teenager, to degrade them in this manner, to force them to select their death, to desecrate her body post death and to leave it at an empty State House just manages to give an insight to a feral NZ underclass that has mutated into something so cruel and ugly it demands amputation from society.
There are some whose actions remove themselves from humanity.
But I also know that suffering and punishment is no solution, that healing is the only real key, that rehabilitation and the abuser gaining insight to their horror and seeking a life of redemption for that wrong is the best we can hope for and need to hope for as we struggle to comprehend the atrocity that Ashley Winter and Kerry Te Amo were prepared so willingly and gleefully to commit.
To torture a teenager to death in this manner manages to eclipse the sin of a Mad Murdering Mother and forces us to ask questions about the society we have built where this was an acceptable response to a girl making fun of another pimples.
That such a pitiful excuse is viewed as a justification by these people is as terrifying as the act itself.
As citizens in a. liberal progressive democracy, we are called upon to fight for the best outcomes and policies even when we are disgusted by the inhumanity so many are prepared to wreck upon others.
A justice system that heals is the goal, even when all we want to do is sink our fists into the faces of these cretins to give them the exact same sense of terror they inflicted upon a teenager.
We are human for wanting that vengeance, but it is a revenge that is not ours to met out.
Justice requires mercy, even when the person breaking the law has shown none themselves.
A little girl was tortured, desecrated and made to choose her own death, dumped in a drum at an empty State House, all over a comment regarding pimples.
If that doesn’t force you to stop in disgusted shock at what our society is becoming, I’m not sure what else can.
Love, compassion and forgiveness can be our only tools here because there simply isn’t enough energy to sate the level of vengeance this case demands.
We can all agree on one thing, Dimetrius Pairama and those 3 little kiddies all deserved so much more than their short lives were cursed by.
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The guillotine would do the trick.
Sure, but only if you have enough cops to round everyone up. (There aren’t.) But why are there places with virtually no crime at all?
I’ve always argued that reporting endless details of individual crimes is irresponsible, and also useless information. The public needs to know about the underlying social issues instead.
• Why were nearly all the mental wards shut down, leaving madmen out on the streets to kill people?
• Why was unemployment deliberately reintroduced after its abolition, providing street gangs and other cartels with an endless recruitment pool of desperate wretches?
• Why did the government support wars that dramatically increased the drug trade, even after Iran-Contra?
• Why does the government refuse to research potential effects of psychotropic drugs on violent crime?
• Why is the music industry openly promoting the glorification of criminal subculture?
• Why have people languished for decades in Guantánamo Bay without a proper trial, and yet nobody bothers to lock up known mafiosi, cartel men and street gang members?
Good luck finding reporting on any of those issues in the corporate press.
I’ve always argued that reporting endless details of individual crimes is irresponsible, and also useless information. The public needs to know about the underlying social issues instead.
Absolutely agree with this. But you know because some people have terrible backgrounds and make it through and people say ‘how come they made it’
Of course I know the answers to all of that.
It is a shocking thing, and I feel the same way. The other horror that we forget is that the interest in the Laura Dickason trial is because they were an middle class family living in pretty good circumstances, and those circumstances reflects the people who say buy the Listener, read the news and opine over climate change. Ashley Winter and Kerry Te Amo are not “us”, and so public interest in the circumstances of these people is less. We prefer to hide away from these people because it’s so awful and comes from circumstances most people who live in say Grey Lynn can’t imagine. A child is killed in their own home nearly monthly in New Zealand, and the interest in these cases from say NZ Herald and Stuff is minimal at best. Even 20 years ago, the mainstream media wouldn’t fear talking about these cases and trying to understand the circumstances. There is very little interest from the MSN today.
I did read all about the Ashley Winter & Kerry Te Amo trial and the torture and murder they perpetrated and ring-led. It was horrific and beyond belief that any humans could do that.
I understand that Winter, who IDs as a woman, is rightly housed in a male prison. I cannot see any extenuating circumstances to justify or excuse their behaviour – tho the woman on trial now was only 16 at the time. Nevertheless most 16 year olds are not so easily influenced by murderous torturers.
I have been following some reports of the Lauren Dickason trial because I want to understand how a mother can kill her 3 young children. So far, I don’t see evidence of insanity. She does have a long history of depression. Some of the circumstances and context are enlightening – definitely a family used to very well-off lifestyle (Dickason is reported to have been highly critical of NZers being scruffy, and rental houses being small and dingy). But, she had been longing to leave South Africa because she saw their lockdowns as being worse than in NZ, and then there were riots and blackouts in her area.
I will be interested to hear what the expert witnesses have to say – so far the evidence has been more anecdotal. Dickason does seem to have a fairly strong sense of entitlement, tho. She does seem to have been considering the practicalities of killing her children for a fair while. I was a bit shocked to read she had initially been self-prescribing anti-depressants, because it is legal to do so in South Africa.
My “interest” in the South African women’s trial is due to the defence of not guilty by reason of insanity. My professional work spanned some of these issues. But it is a shocking heart breaking crime.
Having read about Ashley Winter and his crimes once, I am unable to face reading them again. He is evil. May he rot in hell (and no Millsy, I am not a Christian)
I agree about the details of the Ashley Winter trial and don’t want to read them again.
I am interested in the defence of not guilty due to infanticide. I hadn’t heard it before and would like to hear more about what such a defence entails. Giving birth can take a major toll on a woman’s body & motherhood can be a struggle for many women. However, the way of killing the children looks to be pre-mediated and brutal: ie the use of zip-ties and the failure to kill the children outright.
So far, it looks to me that Dickason could continue to be in a secure facility for many years to come.
Her husband a doctor has a lot to answer for .He clearly took no action to get his wife into mental health care .I have a family member who suffered from the same illness I took it apon myself to get her into hospital for treatment .He should have been detained in NZ to answer these questions .He could not escape the country quick enough .
Your are right the case of the accomplice in the torture and murder of the young girl is the most horrific crime and when I first read about it, I wished I hadn’t. Shocking and in this case I would support the death penalty for Ashleigh Winter. He should never ever be allowed out. He is evil
And yes he is a he and when the msm gaslight us by calling him a women HE identifies as a women), we must call them it. He is a man. An evil man.
As for Laureen whether she fits the insanity defence or not is likely to be hotly contested by psychiatrists. Huge sympathy for her husband
i have no sypathy for here husband as he knew she was un well and dragged her to the other side of the world away from her support net work
Agree Jase. It naive to think we can rehabilitate everyone. We can’t.
As for Ashley Winter. He should rot in hell
Ok I agree with that, but frankly I believe there are only about 200 people who should be in prison, the repeat rapists, murderers and pedophiles. Do people want to be pedophiles, of course not their brains are clearly wired differently. These people should be in civil humanitarian lock ups. Some of them probably for the rest of their lives, but then aren’t they actually mad, I mean mentally mad…
The rest should be working in proper supervised situations, growing veges doing all sorts of things. $100,000 per prisoner a year is absolutely nuts.
I have no interest what so ever in us returning to hanging, lynching, murdering, guillotining people no matter what they have done. If we do this we have no real humanitarian values, not our right to take anyone’s life.
Life should mean life for these two, preventive detention. Of course the judge won’t apply this, he will say they had a violent and impoverished childhood replete with deprivation blah blah blah. They then get a discount like it’s some sort of shopping flybuys. Contrast that with the defense for Dickason in court last week, who insisted that she was ‘a good mum who loved those kids’. Ghoulish, the lot.
I totally agree. Can not think of a worse case, even in the USA.
It is also horrifying some of the details, a police knocked on the door but she apparently did not ask for help, the police only found out because someone informed them and it took a while to find the body in a rusty drum in an abandoned state house.
Nobody seemed to care or notice the absence of this poor teenager who was apparently under Oranga Tamariki care. The teenager was essentially homeless, but state houses nearby are not being renovated and used in a housing crisis and instead became a place to torture and murder the teen.
The sadist murderers who then recruited some intellectually handicapped people to aid them in the torture and killing. Really, really, sick.
The ringleader was transgender, many years older, which makes it even more bizarre that Marama seems to think that there is only transgender love from men transitioned to woman – when there is an appalling example of a torture, sexual sadism and murder of a teen, right under her nose in NZ! Could she be that ignorant? Also not the only murderer in NZ who identifies as transgender. I point this out, because in order to make the best policy in NZ, there needs to be hard facts, not fake facts about how no transgender has ever harmed anybody, being spread by people in positions of power!
These two cases are also of where NZ is going wrong. The doctor who killed her kids was already on antidepressants before coming to NZ.
There seems to be this idea in neoliberalism it is easy to migrate, it’s not – most people can’t migrate successfully, but NZ doesn’t seem to care!
NZ already is woeful in it’s treatment of Kiwis with serious mental illness, it should be instant no, if an applicant for a visa has some mental illness. The change can trigger a full blown episode and then they fall on NZ’s hopelessly few mental health places.
A billion was spent on mental health by government but it seems pretty much nothing to show for it. They seem to favour ‘worried well’ types of funding, than actually serious mental illness help and placements.
We also had the axe attack in Albany by a Chinese national, then beach attack in the North Shore, etc, these people should not be allowed to come into NZ and those who seem to be having mental problems sent back to their home country, where presumably they were ok before, so the few mental places NZ seems to have, can be used for NZ citizens who need the help.
Depressed people are also able to get NZ residency based on mental health issues. It is crazy when NZ mentally ill, seem to be last in line.
Drink-driver who overstayed for 19 years dodges deportation due to wife’s depression
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/300165188/drinkdriver-who-overstayed-for-19-years-dodges-deportation-due-to-wifes-depression
He is from Malaysia and his wife is from Taiwan, overstayed nearly 20 years but got residency, because she is mentally ill, he gets to stay! Great now all the health care and future care will be free on the NZ taxpayer!
They wonder why state house needs never go down!
I wrote down for myself some words that I think that I and all of us need to carry foremost in our minds: Respect: Be kind: Don’t diminish others: Affirm. But also we need Restraint: Principles (google ‘ethics’ Maori matatika)
But think about the effect of television and films we watch as if training ourselves for a harsh future event when we guillotine our heads in effect, and carry out sadistic behaviour remembered with blank minds and faces as shown in the image. Social media just feeds the grisly side of some of us (google Maori kino rawa) from where it can be aroused from its depths and it arises like Dracula. It happens so face it.
We are capable of a spectrum of good to evil but as in most detective stories, look for the money to show the way through the maze of our minds leading to the dark alley side in the spectrum.
Can we go back to Sir Kim Workman and see what he and others like him, have suggested for working with principles-dead young people to try and turn them round from a long lifetime of soulless existence? He is elderly but may like to have some input into a quickly implemented system. Such new system to start within a year with penalties for non-compliance to time and specifications; to work with those that have lost touch with their own and others humanity. https://www.bwb.co.nz/authors/kim-workman/
The two highlighted tragedies and the manifold cases virtually every week where ordinary people are ripped off to the extent of tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars, pale into insignificance compared to the anger and emotion roused when a group of kids steal a car and ram raid a liquor store at 3:00 am.
Infantise, yes, death murder not, twin, childes demands, running, megla, yes infanticies with malice, not , brain gone depression.
Whatever led to this the people involved need to be placed in a secure situation where they can never possibly act this way again to someone else. Not to be vindictive and they should be looked after with kindness and compassion and their abiities developed to have as fulfilling a life as possible within totally secure confinement. It is the future victims that need to be protected; not people who have demonstrated this level of capacity for destruction of other people.
D J S
This country is fucked.
All of it.
Her plea most likely relates to legal advice. Why own your actions when the law allows for alternatives. But at the end of the day the jury will have its say, and perhaps it will be contemplated murder.
It was contemplated from what I read. Perhaps motherhood wasn’t what she hoped it would be, coupled with the extreme stress of immigrating during covid. Wanted her life back. Lost herself in it all. Extreme choice though. She had support afterall.
She was super angry at her husband for going out and leaving her with the kids. Living the life she used to have. She didn’t really like being a mother. She liked the social status it gave her. Narcissist/ Psychopath. Murderer. I do not say that lightly. She obviously didn’t think it through (narcissist). Jail / mental heath facility for life. Bless the kiddies. They’re safe now
I feel sorry for all the whanau in this case, really, she was sick before they came to NZ and her whanau should have got her help she should not have come here until her health issues were sorted. Instead, her mental illness was ignored like it could just go away and now this has led to such a tragedy.
It wasn’t ignored. A psychiatrist’s letter was sent to the NZ Immigration Dept, saying she was OK on her meds. Though Dickason reckons she was off her meds by then.
From today in court:
https://tkr.ro/e/Ey0jTHRsm6GnDNfa
““She is able to function well despite her illness and has never needed admission to a psychiatric hospital.“
Dr. Dickason has never been a danger to herself or any other person”.”
I used to not favour the death penalty. Now I am not so sure. I worry that it would be too easily corrupted, a thin edge of the wedge scenario.
Now, I think we should offer the follow to these people. Take the pills yourself or be housed in general population for your sentence. No segregation.
Have to say I empathise Martyn. The problem with the death penalty is what if the wrong people/person is convicted? In this case however where there is no doubt whatsoever I would love nothing more than to run these two a nice warm bath and pop the toaster on. No it doesn’t solve anything but the thought of having to pay for a roof over the head of these two just does my head in.
Ashley Winter should be given the same treatment as the Chrch mass murderer. Virtual solitarly confinement. Rot in hell the both of you
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