Lauren Dickason has been sentenced to 18 years in prison for the murders of her three daughters in Timaru in September 2021.
Sentenced under the Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Act, she will begin her imprisonment as a patient in a state mental health hospital.
Justice Cameron Mander noted her severe mental illness as the cause of her actions and imposed no minimum non-parole period, making her eligible for parole after serving a third of her sentence.
In a statement released through her lawyer shortly after sentencing, Dickason expressed horror at her actions and acknowledged the immense pain she caused to her family and others who loved her daughters, Liané, Maya, and Karla. She wrote of her ongoing struggle with severe mental illness and her commitment to becoming mentally healthier, despite knowing it would never change the past.
She urged other women to recognise and act on the warning signs of post-partum depression.
Nope, post-partum depression doesn’t last 6 or 7 years.
I don’t buy it, she’s a liar.
Occum’s razor: she did an evil thing and she’s hiding behind “mental health” for a lesser sentence (as they ALL do).
Zero sympathy for child murderers.
IVF, egg donor/s, this woman had little or no biological connection to those children.
It always amuses me how logically such people claim mental illness, pursuing the claim with more mental acuity that sane people. She is mentally ill like a fox. The lying murderess.
The husband shot through to South Africa ASAP. He should have been in the dock beside her.
And for all the lengthy sentence, she will be up for parole in six years. What a joke the justice system is.
Yes, that is a joke. Basically 6 years in a hospital for a triple murderer ‘mother’, whereas New Zealand families are systematically destroyed and ripped apart by the secretive Family Court system.
Justice in New Zealand is a disgrace.