SA dad has forgiven his wife

THE South African father of the three young girls who were killed in New Zealand last week says he has already forgiven his wife, who is accused of their murders.

Graham Dickason, the Pretoria-born orthopaedic surgeon who found his three young daughters dead in their new home in Timaru in Canterbury, New Zealand, urged others to forgive and pray for his wife Lauren at a vigil attended by dozens of families in Timaru on Thursday night.

“Pray for strength and for healing, please also pray for my lovely Lauren, as I honestly believe that she is a victim of this tragedy as well. People who know her well will testify to that,

I have no doubt,” Dickason said in a letter read out at the vigil, according to UK publication Daily Mail.

“'I have already forgiven her and I urge you, at your own time, to do the same,” he added of his wife of 15 years.

Lauren, 40, a medical doctor, has been charged with murdering her twin 2-year-old girls Maya and Karla, and their 6-year-old sister Liane, in a crime that has shocked New Zealand and made headlines around the world.

She is being kept at a psychiatric facility ahead of her next scheduled court appearance on October 5.

The Dickason family moved into housing for medical professionals near Timaru Hospital less than a week before the killings.

Before that, as new arrivals from

South Africa, they were required to spend two weeks in a coronavirus quarantine hotel run by the military.

Neighbours speculated that stress exacerbated by being quarantined “for so long” could have left Lauren unable to cope.

It has also been alleged that Lauren stopped taking anti-depressant medication to meet the country’s strict immigration criteria.

According to the UK publication, Dickason returned home just before 10pm last Thursday and found the bodies of his three daughters.

Emergency services said that when they responded, they found Lauren, who was later hospitalised, in a stable condition. She was later charged by police.

Neighbours called the police when they heard a man screaming and crying.

No cause of death for any of the three girls has emerged, as many details have been suppressed under New Zealand law. At the vigil, Dickason said in his letter that parents of young children should remember to let them play wildly and to laugh.

He wrote: “Dear people of Timaru, my words are few at the moment. On Thursday the 16th of September 2021, my life and Lauren’s was turned upside down when our three precious angels were ripped away from us.

“It is a loss that I will carry with me for the rest of my life.”

Dozens of neighbours turned out, including young children who held candles and laid flowers outside the home.

Flowers and a cross were also laid by the Dickasons’ former neighbours outside the estate where they used to live in Pretoria.

Dickason also thanked “the people of Timaru, New Zealanders, South Africans and many from around the world” for the love they had shown to him.

“My faith in humanity has been restored, I thank you all. In this time of terrible tragedy and adversity, I can only ask for prayer for myself, my family and my friends.

“For the people touched and affected by this, look after yourselves, look after your wives, your husbands, your partners, look after your children,” he wrote.

Mandy Sibanyoni, who worked as a nanny for the Dickasons in Pretoria, described them as an “awesome family” with no obvious problems.

She said the only sign of stress she saw from Lauren was as a result of one of her daughters being born with a lip disfigurement, which needed surgical intervention. But both parents “loved their kids like nobody’s business”, she said.

“I'm torn apart,” Sibanyoni said last week.

“And it’s like those kids, they are my kids too because I raised them.”

She said “the only question that I’ve got now is, what happened? What went wrong? Because Lauren cared for her kids”.