Chris Dawson’s accuser asks to be believed over carnal knowledge claims

Convicted wife killer Chris Dawson’s former student delivers an impassioned plea at his carnal knowledge trial.

Chris Dawson with his first wife, Lyn, who he was last year convicted of murdering so that he could be with a schoolgirl who now accuses him of underage sex.

Convicted wife killer Chris Dawson’s former student and accuser at his carnal knowledge trial, AB, has delivered an impassioned plea for him to be held to account.

AB was being questioned by Dawson’s lawyer, public defender Claire Wasley, late Friday about when he first kissed her.

Ms Wasley suggested to AB that she was making up her evidence in the witness box.

“No. I don’t make these things up. This happened to me,” AB said.

“I’m so sick of this. Having to justify everything I say. And I know it’s just your job but this is my life and this happened to me. And I want something done about it. I want you to believe what I’m saying.”

Asked if she needed a break, AB replied: “No, I want it to end.”

Dawson had been setting up a case for there being reasonable doubt he had illegal sex with AB when she was a schoolgirl by highlighting the timing of her obtaining her learner’s permit.

Prosecutors have to prove the former teacher and professional footballer had sex with AB before the end of the 1980 school year, when she was still 16-years old and a Year 11 student in his sports class at Cromer High.

AB’s learner’s permit came under defence scrutiny on Friday because she has given evidence Dawson first kissed her while teaching her to drive, and sex happened some time after that.

Chris Dawson’s former student, AB, gave harrowing evidence this week that he had groomed her when she was 16-years-old Picture: NCA NewsWire / Damian Shaw

Dawson’s trial in Sydney’s District Court has been told AB could not have legally obtained her learner’s permit until a date in early November 1980, when she was 16 years and nine months old.

The indictment says sex occurred with Dawson before December 12, 1980, the final day of the school year.

For the offence to be proved, that potentially leaves a window of just over four weeks for AB to have obtained her learner’s permit, had her first kiss from Dawson and for sex to have occurred.

Ms Wasley grilled AB about the driving lessons in the final portion of her cross-examination.

“I certainly spent a lot of time in his car. That moment, his kiss, happened when I was in his car with him,” AB said.

When prosecutor Emma Blizard asked her during re-examination to clarify her evidence, AB said the first kiss may have been before the driving lessons.

“The point is it all happened in 1980. It happened in his car in 1980, when we spent time in the car.”

Dawson would drive her to exercise classes and to and from her home and “he had ample opportunity to do that”, she said.

Day five of the trial began with Ms Wasley putting it to AB that she had never received any notes or cards from Dawson in 1980 when she was in Year 11. AB disagreed.

Repeatedly, AB was taken to previous statements and evidence as Ms Wasley sought to highlight omissions and differences to what she has told the carnal knowledge trial.

AB agreed with the defence lawyer that she hadn’t previously mentioned her belief that there was a double meaning when Dawson wrote that she was “a pleasure to teach”.

AB this week told the trial that Dawson was referring to her being a pleasure to teach sexually.

She also described an incident at the end of 1980 when Dawson gave her zero marks for an exam after she alluded to their sexual contact in a written answer.

“My friend … who was next to me thought it would be funny if I wrote something exotic, because we were involved at that point and I’d been having sex with him for quite a long time before that,” she said.

Ms Wasley said that when AB had previously discussed the exam she had not mentioned a friend and had described writing “something cheeky and personal”.

AB didn’t write anything in the exam about Dawson engaging in sexual activity with her, Ms Wasley suggested.

“No, that’s incorrect,” AB said.

Ms Wasley asked AB about her evidence at a 2003 inquest into the disappearance of Dawson’s first wife, Lyn, in which she had described turning to Dawson in a “counselling” type relationship.

“There was certainly much more going on than counselling,” AB told Ms Wasley.

Dawson was last year convicted of Lyn’s murder and is serving a 24-year prison sentence.

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