IMG 20240628 WA0005
Picture Courtesy: (The Citizen/ Faizel Patel): Lauren Dickason was found guilty of murdering her three daughters and has been handed an effective sentence of 18 years in a mental health facility.
(The Post News)- On Wednesday, June 26, Lauren Dickson (43), a former doctor from South Africa, was handed an effective sentence of 18 years in a mental health facility for the murder of her three daughters.
In September 2021, Dickson allegedly strangled her two-year-old twins, Maya and Karla, together with her six-year-old daughter Liane, with cable ties and smothered them to death before trying to commit suicide with a combination of pills at their home in Timaru, South Island of New Zealand.
According to an article written by Faizel Patel, a senior digital journalist at The Citizen, Dickson stated that her attorneys claimed that she had “failed” her daughters; however, she appeared impassive when Justice Cameron Mander handed down the sentence.
In the statement, she holds herself accountable for murdering her daughters, expresses that she loved all three of them with all her heart, and states that she failed them, Graham, and their families.
Additionally, she expressed her honest and profound regret for the immense pain and suffering that her actions caused her family and children.
News24 journalist Nicole McCain wrote in an article that even though crown prosecutor Andrew McRae had requested the court sentence Dickson to life imprisonment and let her stay in prison for at least 17 to 18 years before she could be eligible for parole, Justice Mander ruled that it would be blatantly unfair.
Instead of giving her a life sentence, he gave her three separate sentences totaling 18 years, to be served concurrently, and since he did not establish a minimum sentence, Dickson can be released on parole after serving one-third of her sentence.
Rather than sending Dickson to prison, Justice Mander ordered that she be placed in a mental health facility, and she is to remain there until she is in a mental state stable enough to be transferred to prison.
According to McCain’s article, Justice Mander said that Dickson was a devoted mother, and he thought her actions were the result of her mental illness.
Furthermore, Anna Leask, who is a crime and justice reporter for the New Zealand Herald, stated in an article that at the beginning of the sentencing, Justice Mander described how Dickson murdered her daughters and noted that she had been diagnosed with a major depressive illness while she was a teenager.
He mentioned how her depression had returned over the years, both before and after she had children.
Leask added that Justice Mander said that since the trial began, he has received three experts’ evaluations regarding Dickson’s current mental health, and they state that she had shown “remorse and regret” for killing her little girls, and there was “recognition of the impact of the offence on others.”
The evaluation reports suggested that Dickson’s mental illness persisted.
Dickson is going to serve her 18-year sentence in a mental health unit at Hillmorton Hospital.
About the Author
