"Many of the behaviors she was engaged in were an attempt to bring order using tenets that were important to her religious community and the teachings she relied on," Dr. James Hilkey of Durham testified.

"She clearly believes what she has done is wrong," he said. But he said he didn't think she had the intent to harm her children.

Hilkey, a defense witness in Paddock's murder trial, said that Paddock's troubled childhood left her without the moral compass to distinguish right from wrong.

He said she has chronic depression, an anxiety disorder and post traumatic stress disorder because of the abuse she endured as a child.

"We know her early years were extremely chaotic," Hilkey said. "Her mother was unpredictable. The effect that had on her was not to be able to accurately predict what would happen next."

Earlier today, a social worker corroborated Paddock's description of the severe abuse she suffered as a child.

"It was as bad abuse as we'd ever seen," said Jean Cothran, then a social worker for the Fairfax County, Va., Department of Social Services said. "It stuck with us for a long time."

Cothran worked with Paddock's family in the 1970s and removed Paddock from her family's home as a teenager. She said Paddock endured beatings, hours spend locked in rooms and meals denied.

Cothran said that she was terrified of Paddock's mother. Paddock's mother, Cothran said, called Cothran's home and threatened her children while DSS had an active case against her.

Paddock's siblings and the daughters in the foster home where social workers placed Paddock described her as timid and shy. They said she had a tendency to follow the lead of others and never stuck up for herself.

Judy Blazek, one of the daughters in the foster home where Paddock was sent at age 14, said that it didn't surprise her that Paddock would discipline her children following the instruction of a minister who wrote about child rearing.

Paddock "wanted her family to be perfect. She would pretty much follow any book or any suggestion you gave her to lead them through life. I see her spanking them to get them to be perfect."

Paddock is on trial for the death of her youngest adopted son, Sean, who suffocated in 2006 at the age of 4.

Paddock admitted in testimony Monday that she tightly wrapped Sean in blankets and didn't dispute a pathologist's determination that the binding suffocated him. She swore she never meant for him to die.