Erin Patterson tells court she has never had a ‘healthy relationship’ with food
Barrister Colin Mandy SC turns to ask Erin Patterson about her body image issues.
I’ve tried every diet under the sun.
Patterson says as a child her mother would weigh her each week to ensure they didn’t put on too much weight.
Patterson’s chin appears to tremble as she answers: “I’ve never had a good relationship with food, a healthy relationship.”
Patterson’s voice appears to break as she says she would eat “everything you could get your hands on” before making herself sick.
Patterson says she would not do it around other people.
It was a very private thing.
She says she had been binge eating and making herself sick since her 20s.
Key events
The court has adjourned until 2.15pm.
Catch up on the morning’s proceedings thanks to our justice and courts reporter, Nino Bucci.
Erin Patterson details her first time eating a foraged mushroom
She says the lead up to it was a “process over several months”.
She says she was confident she knew what the field and horse mushrooms she had picked were.
I cut a bit of one of the mushrooms, fried it up with some butter and ate it.
They tasted good and I didn’t get sick.
Patterson said sometimes she would put foraged mushrooms in meals she ate with her children.
I chopped them up very, very small so they couldn’t pick them out.
Patterson recalls a time walking in the Korumburra area when her dog ate some mushrooms.
I picked all the mushrooms that I could see because I wanted to try to figure out what they were.
She says she wanted to work out if the mushrooms would be a “problem” for her dog.
She says she discovered some were edible but she had concerns about one fungi species – inocybe.
Erin Patterson says she developed an interest in wild mushrooms during Covid
Barrister Colin Mandy SC turns to question his client about mushrooms.
Mandy shows Patterson photos she sent to her Facebook friends of mushrooms laid on a dehydrator shelf.
Patterson remarks about one photo: “looks like they’re at the end of the cycle.”
Asked if she developed an interest in wild mushrooms, she replies: “yes, I did.”
Patterson says her interest in mushrooms began during Covid in early 2020 when she would go for walks in the Korumburra Botanic Gardens with her children and noticed them.
Mandy asks Patterson why she has enjoyed eating mushrooms.
They taste good and they’re very healthy.
Asked about wild mushrooms, Patterson says they “just taste more interesting.”
It’s more flavour.
Patterson says she would purchase mushrooms at Woolworths and at markets.
She says she would sometimes purchase dried mushrooms from Asian grocers while staying at her Mount Waverley home with her children.
She says she would use store-bought dried mushrooms in curries, pasta dishes and soups.
Erin Patterson tells court she has never had a ‘healthy relationship’ with food
Barrister Colin Mandy SC turns to ask Erin Patterson about her body image issues.
I’ve tried every diet under the sun.
Patterson says as a child her mother would weigh her each week to ensure they didn’t put on too much weight.
Patterson’s chin appears to tremble as she answers: “I’ve never had a good relationship with food, a healthy relationship.”
Patterson’s voice appears to break as she says she would eat “everything you could get your hands on” before making herself sick.
Patterson says she would not do it around other people.
It was a very private thing.
She says she had been binge eating and making herself sick since her 20s.
Barrister Colin Mandy SC shows the jury messages from 16 December 2022 between Simon and Erin Patterson, while she was on a trip to New Zealand with their children.
Erin says at this point the child support and school fees issue had been sorted.
Erin says that when she returned from New Zealand, she had a good relationship with Simon and his father, Don Patterson.
She recalls attending a Patterson family event with the kids upon their return which was “great”.
Mandy shows the court messages between Erin and Simon on 18 December 2022 where she asks Simon to help because a tree had fallen across a fence at her property and one of her goats was in a neighbour’s yard.
Mandy says the tone in the couple’s messages by 18 December 2022 is conciliatory.
“It is, that’s true,” Patterson replies.
Erin Patterson says she ‘played up the emotion to get support’ from Facebook friends
Barrister Colin Mandy SC takes Erin Patterson to another message on 6 December 2022 to her Facebook friends when she wrote “at least I know they’re [Simon’s parents] a lost cause.”
In another message Patterson wrote “I’m sick of this shit” and “so fuck em”.
I did, I wrote that.
Mandy asks why she sent the message.
Patterson sighs and begins to sniff before she answers.
I needed to vent.
She says the alternative was to “go into the paddock and tell the sheep”.
Asked if she meant the words she used, Patterson says “no” as she becomes visibly emotional.
I regret the language I used.
Patterson says she knew her Facebook friends would rally around her.
I probably played up the emotion a bit to get that support.
Facebook group chat with friends was a ‘safe venting space’, Erin Patterson tells court
In another message on 5 December 2022, Erin messages a group chat on Signal with her estranged husband Simon Patterson, as well as his parents Don and Gail Patterson.
In one message, she says Don’s suggestion that Simon can change his tax return after he listed himself as single is “mind boggling”.
Barrister Colin Mandy SC then shows messages between Erin and her Facebook friends.
In one on 6 December, Erin says her in-laws told her they could not adjudicate her conversations with Simon.
“This family I swear to fucking god,” Erin wrote.
Mandy asks Erin how she was feeling when she sent this message.
I was really hurt and I was really frustrated and felt a little bit desperate.
Erin says the group Facebook chat was created four years before she sent this message.
She says the group discussed “absolutely everything” including what their children were doing, meals they were cooking and current affairs.
It became a safe venting space for all of us.
Mandy asks how Erin feels about the message now.
I wish I’d never said it.. I feel ashamed for saying it and I wish the family didn’t have to hear that I said that.
They didn’t deserve it.
Erin Patterson says son struggled in ‘a lot of aspects of his life’
Barrister Colin Mandy SC takes Erin to messages exchanged with her estranged husband Simon on 6 December 2022.
In one message, Simon says he understands Erin has invited his parents to her house the prior day to discuss how their son is going and “finances for our kids”.
Erin says she asked Don and Gail Patterson for a discussion because she was “struggling to achieve good communication with Simon about a few things”.
I was wanting or hoping Don and Gail might help mediate that a little bit.
Erin says her in-laws had previously meditated between the couple.
She says her son was struggling in “a lot of aspects of his life”, including school.
Erin also wanted to discuss the school fees for the children.
She says prior to the child support disagreement in late 2022, Simon had been paying their school fees.
After this, Simon wanted her to pay all of the school fees, Erin says.
Erin says when Don and Gail visited on 5 December 2022 they offered to pay the children’s school fees if money was an issue.
“Which wasn’t what I needed,” she says.
She says they encouraged the couple to discuss the issue between them.
They didn’t want to become official mediators.
Erin Patterson recalls first conflict about money with estranged husband Simon
Barrister Colin Mandy SC then asks Patterson about messages between her and Simon in November 2022.
In the messages, previously shown to the court, Patterson tells Simon she has applied for child support payments.
The court previously heard that when Patterson sent Simon an anaesthetist fee for their son the same month, he said he had been advised by the government department overseeing child support payments not to provide money for things like that.
“I understood what he was trying to communicate but I didn’t think what he was saying was right,” Patterson says.
She recalls how she was feeling.
I was hurt.
We’d never had a conflict with money that I could remember before that.
Erin Patterson says estranged husband Simon ‘maybe doesn’t get feelings so well’
Barrister Colin Mandy SC shows the court messages, previously tendered, on the app Signal between Erin and Simon from October 2022.
In the messages, Simon asks Erin if she is attending his mother’s birthday. Erin replies that she was unaware of the birthday event.
Erin tells the court she felt hurt:
I was annoyed with myself because I had forgotten that it was a big birthday coming up for Gail … I was hurt.
In one message exchange on 14 October 2022, Erin says she is “sorry” for shouting at Simon that afternoon.
Simon replies and apologises for raising his voice. He says he “wouldn’t call what either of us did shouting.”
Asked by Mandy if the interaction was typical for the couple.
Patterson replies:
This is a really good example of how we normally solved it. What happened in this exchange was a typical kind of … I might feel hurt about something … Simon maybe doesn’t get feelings so well.. I would feel hurt … we’d be annoyed at each other for a day or two and then we’d calm down and apologise.
Erin Patterson says she and estranged husband Simon had financial disagreements
Barrister Colin Mandy SC asks Patterson about a child support dispute between her and Simon Patterson in late 2022.
Patterson says the topic of child support first came up in October 2022 as she was preparing her tax return.
She says she learned Simon had listed himself as “single” on his tax return form.
Patterson says she was frustrated she had not been told about it earlier when she could have applied for the family tax benefit as a single parent.
From my perspective that was the only annoyance.
Under questioning by Mandy, Patterson agrees the disagreement snowballed into other issues about finances.
Erin Patterson also recalls a “traumatic” health issue where her daughter required a nasogastric tube and was screaming in hospital.
She says her daughter still remembers this.
Colin Mandy SC asks about photographs previously shown to the jury of search history extracted from a computer police seized from Patterson’s house.
He says this shows Patterson was Googling symptoms she thought she had.
“That’s correct,” Patterson says.
Erin Patterson says she was told she was an ‘overly anxious mother’
Patterson says her family’s health history added to her concern about potentially having ovarian cancer.
She touches on the health issues of her daughter with an ovarian mass.
She says her daughter was diagnosed with an ovarian mass when she was eight months old.
Right from when she was born, I thought there was something wrong. She cried a lot but not normal crying.
She says doctors told her she was an “overly anxious mother who should relax”.
Patterson’s voice cracks as she recalls feeling “something” when giving her daughter a massage.
They still dismissed me.
She says doctors said her daughter probably had a “very full bladder”.
She says the experience “considerably damaged my faith in the health system”.
