We want to believe Lauren Dickason was criminally insane, it’s looking less likely

By
Martyn Bradbury
-
47
2518

We all want to believe Lauren Dickason was criminally insane when she murdered her own 3 children.

We do, we simply can not imagine any scenario where a mother would willingly murder her own kids based on anything less than insanity.

Unfortunately for her, I simply don’t believe the defence has managed to get even close to criminally insanity.

Yes she was depressed, yes she was having a hard time in a new country, yes it was extra stressful because of Covid but none of that even gets close to criminal insanity!

Criminal Insanity is an absolutely credible and righteous legal defence whereby a person can not tell the difference between right or wrong, where their logical functions as a rational human being have been severed from reality, and Lauren feeling depressed sad sad sad doesn’t even get close to that psychological state.

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She wasn’t hearing voices, she wasn’t disconnected from reality, Jesus wept, she was justifying the order of murder because the youngest one was ‘playing up’.

In an age of subjective rage where ‘lived experience’ trumps objectivity, we have lulled ourselves into a micro aggression trigger culture where if we feel it, that’s all that matters, luckily for the justice of her children she murdered, that shit don’t fly in Court.

The trial continues.

 

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47 COMMENTS

  1. I heard RNZ’s morning report yesterday that described her statement to the detectives.
    The eldest daughter was ‘very angry at what mummy was doing, and it wasn’t necessary because she was the best mummy in the world..’.

    Heartbreaking.

    • Ada. Yes, it is heartbreaking. We who are birthing mothers cannot begin to imagine how this scenario came about. This mother had also struggled both with fertility problems, and with maintaining her pregnancies.

      This is also massively psychologically clobbering, and can require input of hormonal treatments which can affect one’s psychological and emotional balance and general well-being. This is an experience unique to women and an experience which can impact for a long time, sometimes forever. In these circumstances, none of us is in a position to pass judgment, we can only wish that it had not happened, and that it never happens again.

      I believe that Elizabeth McK who killed her three children in Strowan, decades ago, had phoned her husband at work that morning and said that she intended killing the children, and I think that he did not believe her, and that this fact may not have been presented at her trial. These are not enraged mothers suddenly snapping, or running amok like drunks or druggies, they are too complex to make any sense of, because they do not make sense, and I’m not sure that we should even try to. McK, an intelligent well-educated woman had also displayed a prior pattern of changed personal behaviour, and it is at this point that mental health issues should be given more cognisance than they seem to be. RIP all the dead children.

      • I’ve seen how hormonal treatment can affect women, I’ve seen someone who did not want to die use all of their willpower not to plunge a knife into their wrist, crying on the floor in the hallway in the middle of the night.

        • Just some troll. I know. It can be awful. Similar may happen with persons transgendering and being given hormones; huge, possibly dangerous doses of testosterone are given to would-be men in the USA, and the excessive behaviour of some blokes in frocks raise a few issues. A quite old neighbour on hormones to grow breasts has undergone a distinct personality change.

          Michal’s comment is particularly relevant too, especially with modern isolated nuclear families with no family support, job and home relocations, exhaustion, keeping up appearances.

          Obstetrics was historically dominated by men, and some good men, but women’s hormonal issues were often seen as not medically interesting, or dismissed as hysteria, and this can also silence women. My Sri Lankan gynaecologist said most of the physical medical problems presented to him had their origins in other issues which women wouldn’t, or didn’t, speak about. It’s all massively complex and challenging.

      • Thanks for this Snow White. I do remember Elizabeth McK’s case.
        Both of these are terribly sad.
        These sorts of mental health issues when kids are young, and it is stressful, including post baby depression are far more common than is acknowledged. I didn’t go to my doctor to tell him my thoughts because I was terrified of having my kids taken from me.
        The major issue I see is the way we now live, isolated in our own home, no aunt on hand to take your baby whilst you rest etc.

        It is extremely complex, depression is complex and in the end those who understand it have often been there.
        We need to remind ourselves that Elizabeth has to live with what she did as will Lauren.

        I do hope Lauren is one day able to continue on with her life regardless of the legal outcome.

    • Will the pundits and politicians start calling for all the abandoned mental wards to be reopened? No, the issue will be buried by the press barons once again, sadly.

  3. Narcissist with a God complex comes to mind unfortunately. Bless the kiddies. They’re safe now.

    • You may well be spot on with your analysis. It is insane to contemplate anything other than insanity as the reason for this and many other tragedies that we see unfold in front of our eyes.

      As a society we have to target our care better. Maybe, it is time to change our form of governance to something that is less narcissistic. The problem is that once elected to office, the newly elected gains narcissism in spades. It comes with the job!

  4. Let the witch hunt of the white woman begin. Anything to take attention off Kiri, and well done, Covid is Pa, you’ve done it again.

    • In normal communities murder is a little bit more frowned upon than driving offenses don’t you think captain normal?

  5. Here is a question for everyone with legal skills. After only being in the country for a few weeks (only just settling in really), and then committing that crime, what is she still doing here? Why are the NZ taxpayers funding this expensive exercise? Why was she not put on a plane under some sort of ‘deportation clause’ as part of the immigration process?

    • How did they get their visa, when the mother had been on antidepressants for years and already had issues like anxiety which is not a good mix with migration and had 3 small kids.

      This is not the only person who has come to NZ then inflicted a violent on others the axe attacker in Albany recently, the Mall Terrorist and Tarrant. Starting to become common and NZ is now a less safe place. With all the division in race now, we have people like Reid deciding to shoot out two innocent people at his workplace.

      NZ is going backwards with out society as we seem to be attracting people who are unstable and are dangerous and we get them here and then start worrying about their health and criminal convictions! Then violent and criminals in NZ seem to be able to released on home detention as the prisons are full.

      Migrants should not be allowed into NZ and working here if they are unstable in any way – and need drugs to cope.

      Tired of NZ authorities fine with playing Russian roulette with future victims lives, and not actually taking lessons from the increasingly violent and unstable people who seem to be attracted to NZ’s easy immigration Ponzi, that other countries would reject.

      Don’t forget the ‘refugee’ family that came to NZ from China where the son was already convicted for killing a student in Canada and putting her in a suitcases when he was studying there. No red flags from NZ immigration when they arrive!

      Recently the real estate agent is missing, a suspect went to the airport to fly out without any luggage!

    • Because she committed a crime here. Just like the Chch terrorist. We would all love him to be sent back to Aussie of course

    • Don’t be daft, don’t you know the law.
      These kids were murdered in Timaru in Aotearoa, she has to come to court there.

    • I do not think there is a legal requirement, it is an issue of morality.

      Please do not ask me what my opinion is whether our NZ society is morally mature enough to deal with issues of this gravity.

    • There are laws in NZ.
      Here the police charge you if you break the law.
      There is police discretion but no-one has actually defined what that means and the officers and officials struggle with that part.

      Welcome to Aotearoa. That means New Zealand.

  6. Depression isn’t just bad feelz, “logical functions as a rational human being have been severed from reality” absolutely describes depression/past partum depression/suicidal ideation. The stress and anxiety of both social unrest and moving to another country both amplify these conditions, and these conditions warp parental instinct. Actions may appear to have rational causes but what these mental afflictions do is blind the afflicted to alternatives and rob them of choice – and that is the severance from reality.

    For years this woman was crying out in anguish to the void, to friends and family who apparently did nothing, remedies available to her apparently included self reference to antidepressants and a move which was always likely to make the problem worse. I’m amazed she lasted six years.

    Simply put if Dickason is found sane-guilty it’ll be down to some smoking gun the crown haven’t revealed yet OR more likely because New Zealand can’t and won’t understand mental illness.

    • Agree especially with the first para.

      My doctor said to me years ago ‘depression’ is a part of life, just as kidney disease, cancer etc. are a part of life.

      • Avoid that doctor.
        Maybe, the doctor said or meant to say stress is just part of life.
        Depression is not good, when it comes calling you need serious help.

        • Free speech allows us to speak in great metaphors and use satire to make language more colourful.
          As manifested in your comment and the comment you commented on.

          Long live free speech.

          • Trevs comment ain’t a great metaphor. It’s clumsy racist dog whistling.

            Who remembers back when just about every bigoted cocky had a black dog named Nig ?

            My white uncle was one. He would beat the shit out of the hapless mutt for not interpreting his whistles correctly when rounding up sheep. All the while yelling ‘You fucking dirty black bastard’

            And he wasn’t even a cracker ass saffa. He was South Island born and bred and this was the 80’s just before the flood gates opened and the ignorant japies started pouring into NZ, inundating us with their white supremacist ideology.

            Bless their little cottonsocks…

            • A quote from Winston Churchill. Look it up. Then again, I guess sone may argue he was a racist also.

              Free speech needs a free ear.

  7. Andrea Yates come to mind. Again, birhting children does not imply that the children are loved. Again, what i don’t understand is why they insisted on migrating to NZ when she was clearly unwell, how Migration NZ let her in, and who was her support coming from SA to Invercargill. Was she really just expected to get on with their lifes in a place where she knew no one and had no support system. Was the father of the kids not warned in SA that his wife had these issues?

    Fuck this is just so fucked up. In any case i doubt that she will get 12 month home d for her crime and rightly so. But i would rather see her in a mental institution than a prison, but i guess we don’t have that anymore, institutions for mentally ill people.

    • Do we still have mental institutions where people are detained?
      I thought we closed them all

  8. Let’s just wait and see what the psychiatric reports say. You know the people who likely interviewed her over a period of time.

    Having said that, I am expecting them to be contradictory

  9. I do think that it is a extremely difficult case to decide. It is a knife edge situation.

    On one hand she tried to commit suicide an indicator of mental illness and I believe was suffering from severe post natal depression at the time which is hormonal and something outside of her control.

    But on the other, I think she had anger towards her husband and children and there was pre mediation.

    Is it insanity or 2nd degree murder when she was under the influence of post natal depression but did know what she was doing?

    In NZ, 2nd degree murder is probably home detention – I doubt she is a danger to others with the insanity – it was directed at her kids and herself in these post natal depression situations.

    It is a horrible tragedy, waste and situation for all involved. The problem in these cases is that it goes beyond the person – it is catastrophic for her kids, her husband, her family, the loss for everyone from her actions and she will not really get much penalty from NZ courts, unless they find her guilty of 1st degree murder – and I don’t think this would be fair either as it seems clear that post natal depression played a significant role.

    • On one hand she tried to commit suicide…
      ____________

      Taking a couple of painkillers and dabbing your wrist with a knife indicates she wasn’t trying hard enough.

    • It is indeed a grave tragedy. But it is actually quite straight forward.

      Was there an offence, who was offended against, will the accused reoffend, what punishment is appropriate, will the punishment deter others……… on top of that is the fact that she will be deported (as is our custom) and will then no longer pose any direct threat to NZ society.

      “If a tree falls……”

  11. Really does anyone want to “believe” or know anything about this looped out woman whose children paid the ultimate price–their lives?

    I suspect a lot of people would prefer to not know too much about this case more than the gruesome details of any other murder or car crash–but the media channels sure put it in our collective faces 24/7.

    Surely no-one kills their kids unless something is majorly wrong–if she was half lucid they could have been dropped off at the cop station, medical centre, a neighbour, anything but slaughtering innocents. I take the other posters point–that merely giving birth is not a prediction of the future relationship. Kid murder in NZ is often a divorced bloke who decides to take the kids with him and that is where this one sits.

  12. She isnt the first woman to be driven up the wall by her kids. And not the first mother with mental health issues.

    Amazing how many people are willing to hang brown people but are making excuses for this woman.

    • That’s because she isn’t punching them, burning them, putting them in clothes dryers and neglecting them.

      She had depression but wasn’t abusing them before hand, she just killed them one night, and then tried to kill herself.

      That is a different scenario than our normal child abuse – likewise the parents were not divorcing or breaking up, another type of child killing, when one party kills the kids during a break up to punish the other so they can’t get custody.

      This is clearly in the, is it insanity or is it murder?

      My view, is that they would all still be alive if she had not got the visa to come to NZ, aka our immigration policy should have denied the visa, after finding out she had a history of depression so that this situation would not have ever happened. But NZ doesn’t seem to believe in forward risk planning.

      • By the sounds of it, she was whacking them, and screaming and swearing at them, see? Making excuses for her because she is white. You are so damn racist.

  14. My sympathies go to those on the jury faced with responsibility of sitting in judgment on this case.
    My guess is that whatever the outcome they’ll always be left wondering if it was the right thing to do.

    • And her husband may be forever wondering whether he should have gone out to dinner that night, leaving his clearly disturbed wife at “ home” on her own, with a handful of small children.

  15. If we stick to the point about caring about and understanding the woman who did the crime we might see past our prejudices and cliches. Now here is a list of setbacks that can occur in a life and as they accumulate they cut into the psyche until they can leave mental wounds that become overwhelming.
    https://scales.arabpsychology.com/s/life-events-checklist-modified/

    What are the mental effects of moving to another country?
    The stress of the move and adjustment to the new country, can lead to anxiety and depression and other psychological problems amongst migrants. Often the hardest thing for new migrants is coping with the loss of family and friends and the realisation that their loved ones are devastated by their move.14 Pēp 2018
    Psychology & Immigrating – Imagine Health
    imaginehealth.ie
    https://imaginehealth.ie › psychology-immigrating

  16. She and her family should have stayed in their own country.

    Once found guilty she and her husband need to be deported back to South Africa.

    There’s enough racist saffas here without adding crazy ones and their enablers to the list.

    Far too many white South Africans here as is and we’re laying the welcome mat out for even more.

    Nah, fuck that. Go home and sort the shit out in your own country rather than coming here and trying to turn ours into the shithole yours is!

  17. Yes Apple wood would u want this women to have more children and why did her and her husband both wl educated peoe come here when they knew they had mental health issues to deal with. As for u referring to the white women bullshit line I wonder what many of you lot would have said had it been a brown women. Racist judgemental views are common on this site. I have a sister who has suffered from mental illness for forty years she takes her meds so she can now care for her two mokos. She’s has never been a danger to anyone but herself we have had to commit her to protect her not others. Have you had any experience with a close whanau member suffering for many years somehow I doubt it.

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