On the three-month anniversary of her children's deaths, murder-accused Lauren Dickason told a forensic psychiatrist she still felt she'd done the right thing.
Dr Justin Barry-Walsh, who's giving evidence for the defence, is the fourth expert witness to be called in the 42-year-old's trial at the High Court in Christchurch.
Dickason's pleaded not guilty to murdering her girls Liane, Maya and Karla in September 2021, using the defences of insanity and infanticide.
Barry-Walsh became engaged with the case two weeks after the alleged offending, and first met with the defendant on October 10 2021.
'Better off dead'
"My first interview with her was for an hour and a half and that was all I was prepared to do with Ms Dickason, and that was because of the level of distress she displayed," he told the court.
"She said that she was happy to continue but I was not satisfied that it was a humane or decent thing to do. So I finished it at that point."
On that meeting he described the defendant as "very depressed" and said she was crying most of the time.
"Overall she conveyed a sense of utter hopelessness and bleakness."
Barry-Walsh told the court Dickason described having an "out of body experience" at the time she killed her girls.
"Did not feel like I was doing it, did not feel like me doing it," she told him.
"She said she had no emotions. She told me that 'it felt like it was right'."
She recalled to him her first memory after the incident was when she woke up the day after the killings in hospital.
"Ms Dickason said she could not believe she was still alive. She said she saw a policeman. She observed, to that point she had not thought of the consequences."
She said to him "I didn't change my mind about the kids dying, it was right until about a week afterwards".
Barry-Walsh told the jury: "When she was told the children was dead she thought 'at least they are free of all the frustrations and the problems in the world'. She told me 'still feel like it's a good thing they are free of that'.
"She stated she still felt that they were better off dead."
He said "she felt guilty for what she had done, she did not see any point in continuing and that she was 'probably going to hell anyway'."
'She described feeling terrible guilt'
The expert conducted an additional, longer interview with Dickason two months later, in which he said she was also teary.
"She admitted that she'd been struggling, that she'd had a bad day.
"I hadn't appreciated it but it was the three-month anniversary of the death of her children," Barry-Walsh said.
But he told the court that Dickason was "better integrated, better put together, better able to give an account of herself in December 2021 than when I saw her in October".
"The problem with seeing people so early is that often they're still very unwell and in addition they're still greatly affected, if you like - shocked - by their actions."
During this second meeting, Barry-Walsh said Dickason told him that waking up each morning was "like a kick in the guts, that she had no future and just wanted to die".
"She told me that she was missing the kids a lot as well."
He asked her, whether she still felt she'd done the right thing. He said her response was, "the way that I am feeling, yes".
"Despite this, she described feeling terrible guilt, which began about five weeks after she was hospitalised, when the period of numbness began to wear off and feelings started to come back. She described tearfully the level of distress she feels with 'all the hurt I have caused'.
'Sometimes still feels she has saved the children'
The expert carried out two further interviews with Dickason in May this year.
In their third interview he said "she talked about her children and happy times with them as if they were still alive".
"How did that strike you at the time?" defence lawyer Anne Toohey asked him. "Poignant," he replied.
By this point she told Barry-Walsh "the numbness had worn off and it was 'horrible, ugly' dealing with the court case which led to 'it all coming up', she also said that she was 'missing my girls so much'."
"She also described being totally overwhelmed when she heard her husband Graham was not going to come to the trial."
Speaking about her mood, she told the psychiatrist she "cried a lot and prayed every night that she would not wake up in the morning".
Barry-Walsh told the jury: "She said she started questioning the rightness or wrongness more rigorously two to three months after the hospitalisation".
"She stated now she would do anything to change what happened but she still sometimes feels she has saved the children from the pain of the world."
The forensic psychiatrist continues to give evidence in the fourth week of the trial.
By Lisa Davies and Laura James
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