Chris Dawson: The final shame of an evil old man

Chris Dawson outside the NSW Supreme Court in Sudney in 2022. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Damian Shaw

The scenes are almost surreal. An old man sitting feebly and covering his face with his hands. The shame. He’s beamed on to our screens from the notorious Long Bay prison.

A female prosecutor, about half his age, telling a judge in Sydney why the accused needs to be appropriately punished for grooming a schoolgirl. Another, separate prison term on top of the 18 years he’s already doing for murder seems inevitable, though irrelevant; he’ll be dead before he’s due for parole on ­August 30, 2040.

On her feet, his defence lawyer doing her best to plead leniency. Acting for a remorseless, schoolgirl-grooming former teacher, Australia’s most notorious wife-killer, must be a tough gig. But he’s got early-stage dementia.

And, finally, a no-nonsense judge, the daughter of a top police officer, leaving the bench for an hour and a half to read all the relevant papers. Then ­returning to the Downing Centre District Court to deliver sentence on the gaunt figure in khaki prison jacket.

Near the end, judge Sarah Huggett said: “Christopher Dawson, for the offence of carnal knowledge of a girl above the age of 10 years and under the age of 17 years, and who was your pupil, I sentence you to imprisonment for three years, commencing 30 August, 2039, and expiring on 29 August, 2042.”

This is it. The final, unsatisfying act in an almost unbelievable drama that opened 43 years ago on the playground of a public high school on Sydney’s sun-kissed northern beaches.

When the old man was an athletic, charismatic, popular PE teacher, and the target of his attentions was a vulnerable kid aged 16 with a heavy-drinking mother and a violent, angry ­stepfather.

As a 32-year-old with two small daughters in 1980 and a wife who had about 18 months to live, Dawson took the teenager to his childhood home in ­Maroubra. His parents, Syd and Joan, had gone away for the weekend to their south coast holiday shack at Shoalhaven.

Dawson had been grooming the schoolgirl for months. She was trembling. After the offence of carnal knowledge was committed, he actually praised her. She’d performed well, he ­assured her.

Was he hiding behind his hands as some of these facts were recounted on Friday because, deep down, he was finally showing contrition? Or did the old man who had satisfied his lust 43 years ago in Syd and Joan’s bedroom, a short walk from his prison cell, still feel sorrow only for himself?

Not for the schoolgirl, who ­became his second wife. And not for Lyn Simms, his first wife, slain in January 1982. Her body is still unrecovered despite the pleas of his eldest daughter, Shanelle, and Lyn’s siblings, Pat Jenkins and Greg Simms.

At Long Bay, he has returned to where he grew up along some of the most remarkable coastline. Just south of Bondi Beach and a little farther around, Clovelly, the childhood home of his first wife.

I’ve seen photographs of him near his childhood home in ­Maroubra as a six-year-old in a school classroom, sitting beside twin brother Paul. Bib and Bub. Old near-neighbours remember Joan doting on her “twinnies”. Dressing them identically.

They could do no wrong in Joan’s eyes. They became models, school teachers, and pin-up footballers for the Newtown Jets. Local kids remember them as ­bullies. Joan’s blessing is that she didn’t live to see the final act.

“That, then, Mr Dawson, completes your matter before this court,” Judge Huggett told the old man.

“Thank you, Your Honour,” he replied softly.

The old man stood up and turned. He shuffled away from a depressing little room in Long Bay’s prison.

The taunts of other prisoners who despise the child sex offenders is ahead of him.

For the rest of us, the drama may be finally over.

Hedley Thomas is the author of a new book, The Teacher’s Pet, published by Pan Macmillan and due for release on October 10.