Convicted wife-killer Chris Dawson will soon learn if a judge has found him guilty of having sex with an underage schoolgirl while she was sixteen years old and in his care.
The murderer’s trial on one charge of carnal knowledge comes to a close next week, with crown prosecutor Emma Blizard and his defence counsel, Claire Wasley, due to sum up their cases next Tuesday.
Then it is up to Judge Sarah Huggett to decide Dawson’s fate, with him potentially facing a further 14 years in prison.
It is less than a year since he was convicted of the 1982 murder of his wife Lynette, for which he his serving a 24 year maximum sentence, with no possibility of parole until 2040.
Dawson will then be 92 years old, but his lawyers have suggested ill health would mean he will likely die in jail if his planned appeal against the murder conviction fails.
Dawson, who is about to turn 75 in prison, denies a charge he engaged in sexual activity with the woman identified as ‘AB’ between July and December 1980.
At the time AB was aged 16 and a Year 11 student at the school where Dawson, a former Newtown Jets rugby league player, worked on Sydney’s northern beaches.
Convicted wife-killer Chris Dawson is about to learn if a judge will find him guilty of of having sex with an underage schoolgirl while she was sixteen years old and in his care
It is less than a year since he was convicted of the 1982 murder of his wife Lynette (right), for which he his serving a 24 year sentence with no possibility of parole until 2040
Evidence in the judge-alone trial at the Downing Centre District Court finished on Thursday.
The woman, now aged in her late fifties, told the court that she began a sexual relationship with Dawson in August or September 1980, when she was a 16-year-old student in his physical education class.
Dawson accepts they engaged in a sexual relationship, but says it did not begin until 1981 when the alleged victim was 17 years old.
AB said in evidence that the pair’s first sexual activity occurred in the second half of 1980 in the Maroubra home of Dawson’s parents, who were away at their holiday house.
She said that afterwards he asked if she was alright and told her ‘it was a good start’ and ‘you did really well’.
She was also ‘told to keep it a secret’ and that the sex continued with Dawson, in the back seat of his car, in his school office and in a pool, when his brother was up the other end with another girl.
Dawson, who is about to turn 75 in prison, denies charges he engaged in sexual activity with the woman identified as ‘AB’ between July and December 1980
AB testified that at first Dawson had been a kind of ‘counsellor’ after she confided in him her tumultuous home life with a violent stepfather and alcoholic mother.
AB and other students drank with teachers at the local Time and Tide Hotel, where Dawson, a teetotaller, drank only Coca Cola while he allegedly groomed her.
‘He used to sit there telling me about himself, how great he was,’ AB said.
‘It was part of the grooming process … to get me to trust him. Which I did.’
She told the court Dawson first made an ‘improper’ move on her during a driving lesson, the timing of which was crucial to the evidence because AB didn’t qualify for her learner’s permit until November 1980.
According to the indictment, Dawson is accused of engaging in sexual activities with the teen between July 1 and December 12 of 1980.
In her evidence, she later said the ‘improper’ act may have, in fact, been when they were spending time in the car.
She added that he often drove her to exercise classes and other places, and it may not have been a driving lesson.
‘It happened in his car in 1980, when we spent time in the car,’ AB said.
She added: ‘He had ample opportunity to do that.’
AB told Dawson’s defence barrister Claire Wasley it was possible the driving lesson occurred before she had her learner’s permit.
The trial heard allegations that Chris Dawson (above with his twin brother Paul and a model) drank with underage schoolgirls at a local hotel, the Time and Tide, where he allegedly groomed AB
‘I suggest that’s something you made up in the witness box just now,’ Ms Wasley said.
‘No, I don’t make these things up. This happened to me. I’m so sick of this, having to justify everything I say,’ AB said, becoming tearful.
‘I know it’s your job but this is my life … I want you to believe what I’m saying.’
The trial heard from a man who was a 16-year-old trolley boy at a Northern Beaches Coles supermarket in 1980, and claimed Dawson threatened him and told him to stay away from AB.
He said AB knocked back all of his advances and then, during a Saturday morning shift while he was collecting trolleys in the supermarket’s car park, he was confronted by a man who he identified as Chris Dawson.
The man said he had been coached in rugby union by Dawson’s twin Paul and it took a moment to dawn on him who he has.
‘A man I now know as Mr Dawson came out from near a car, out of the shadows, there was light streaming in, there are slits in the wall that let in the sunlight in,’ he said.
Chris Dawson is accused of having se with schoolgirl AB when she was 16 and he was a father of two girls married to Lynette Simms (above, right) who he murdered in1982
‘He said “hey you” or words to that effect,’ the man said, adding that Dawson had backed him up against a concrete ramp.
‘He was pushing my chest, not really aggressively, more in just a threatening way, I guess you could say,’ the man told the court.
‘Then he backed me up against that wall, around my chest or lower throat, he wasn’t strangling me or anything like that, he was pushing and holding me.
‘He was a very large man. Both the Dawson brothers looked like Chesty Bonds, that’s how we described them back then, very muscular, blond, played for Newtown. So I knew about them from football.
‘And it took a minute to clock who it was because I’d never met him before.’
The man told the court that Dawson said words to the effect of: ‘Stay away from her, don’t go near her.’
A onetime teenage Coles trolley boy told the court that former Newtown jets player Dawson backed him up in the supermarket car park and told him to ‘stay away’ from AB who he’d found attractive
‘I was completely perplexed about what was going on and probably pretty scared,’ the man said.
‘I said: “Who?” He said: “(AB)” … And all of a sudden the pieces fell together.’
He said he ‘hightailed it’ up the ramp back to the store and that was the only time he interacted with Dawson.
He told the court the event happened in 1980 and was able to place the date given he did not have his learner’s permit or a car at the time.
Under cross examination from Ms Wasley, the man denied suggestions that he was not threatened by Chris Dawson.
‘What I’d suggest is that Mr Dawson didn’t touch you and wasn’t threatening in any way,’ Ms Wasley said.
‘Disagree,’ the man said.
Following closing submissions next Tuesday, Judge Huggett is expected to deliver her verdict at a later date.
