Solace for Lyn Dawson’s loving, long-suffering family

Lynette Dawson’s family outside the Supreme Court in Sydney after Chris Dawson was found guilty. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Damian Shaw

Merilyn Simms tapped me on the leg. “Look there,” whispered this always-caring woman, the wife of Lyn Dawson’s brother, Greg.

I first met them at their home near Newcastle in late 2017 when they agreed to be integral in my proposal for a podcast series, The Teacher’s Pet – once they understood with Lyn’s loyal sister Pat Jenkins what a podcast was.

These humble, honest-as-the-day-is-long people had felt badly let down by the criminal justice system for a long time. The podcast, they privately resolved, would be their last roll of the dice for Lyn. Keeping her gravely ­suspicious disappearance in the ­public eye took an emotional toll. They were almost broken by it.

On this judgment day – almost five years later – Merilyn went from gripping my hand to subtly pointing to Chris and Peter Dawson, sitting a few metres from us in the Sydney Supreme Court.

Chris Dawson, the best man at Greg and Merilyn’s wedding, was statue-like. Unflinching on a day he must have believed would never come. Judgment day.

But as Justice Ian Harrison delivered his findings and called out the lies and scheming which helped a killer evade justice for four decades, Peter, the lawyer of the family, knew his little brother was doomed.

Almost imperceptibly, Peter – whose curt description in his own evidence of Lyn as merely a “competent” mother of her two little girls had angered all who witnessed Lyn’s remarkable love – inched his chair closer to Chris.

They were almost touching now. Merilyn spotted the move and took it as a bad sign for Dawson. Peter now knew that Chris would be behind bars before the day was out.

Shows of emotion in Team Dawson are rare; they’re not touchy-feely like Lyn’s clan, the Simms family. And for a brief ­moment it was possible to feel sorrow for a cold-blooded killer as his end, finally, appeared close.

Upstairs in the overflow Banco Court, a crowd of onlookers – friends of Lyn, and people who had walked off the street to ­witness a day of drama – craned to watch and hear every word on the screen.

It was a hopelessly one-sided spectator affair; almost everyone there wanted Dawson in handcuffs before lunch. Lyn’s great friends led by Diana Alcorn from Sydney Girls High came to will his downfall; her staunch friends from the childcare centre, Susan Strath and Anna Grantham, joined the throng and remembered Lyn’s kindness and care and her naive dedication to Chris.

Team Dawson members were thin on the ground behind Chris – but they were not silent.

His twin brother Paul Dawson finally showed up to court to lend support, having been conspicuous with his absence throughout the murder trial.

Mutterings of “that’s bullshit” when Chris was being called a liar came from the back row where Team Dawson sat.

“Who cares?!” was the refrain when schoolgirl JC’s grooming and damage at the hands of an ­infatuated teacher twice her age – Chris Dawson – were described by Justice Harrison.

When the verdict of guilty was finally delivered late in the day, the Banco Court upstairs went up in cheer.

Merilyn gripped my hand, harder and dabbed her eyes as two officers of the court walked across the carpet towards Chris.

He was handcuffed there and then, and led past the judge. Limping, “like a wounded animal” as my colleague Matt Condon observed. Past the judge and through a side door in front of us. It was brutal and visceral in its execution. And 40 years overdue.