Chris Dawson’s carnal knowledge conviction appeal thrown out

A bid by murderer Christopher Michael Dawson to overturn his conviction for carnal knowledge of a schoolgirl has been dismissed by the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal.

Chris Dawson in 2022. Picture: AAP

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A bid by murderer Christopher Michael Dawson to overturn his conviction for carnal knowledge of a schoolgirl has been dismissed by the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal.

Dawson was tried for carnal knowledge of the 16-year-old schoolgirl – known by the pseudonym AB – in late 2023, relating to his unlawful sexual relationship with her in 1980. The proceedings were covered in the second season of The Australian’s podcast The Teacher’s Trial.

District Court Judge Sarah Huggett found guilty him guilty of one count of carnal knowledge and sentenced him to three years in prison, with a two-year non-parole period to be served partially concurrently with his 22-year sentence for the 1982 murder of his wife, Lynette.

In the proceedings, Dawson’s barrister Stephen Odgers SC argued the trial judge erred in failing to take into account evidence relating to the timing of the alleged sexual intercourse and that there was reasonable doubt around when it occurred.

The schoolgirl alleged she first had sex with Dawson before December of 1980, when she was in year 11. But Mr Dawson denied any sexual intercourse occurred until the following year, when the girl had turned 17.

“The central issue at the trial and on this appeal relates to timing – there was no dispute that sexual intercourse did ultimately take place between the appellant and the complainant, but the question was whether the prosecution proved whether it occurred prior to December 1980,” Mr Odgers told the court in March.

Dawson also argued the guilty verdict was unreasonable due to deficiencies in the evidence presented.

Judge Sarah Huggett during sentencing. Picture: NewsWire / Damian Shaw

A three-judge panel dismissed the appeal on Friday.

All three justices found AB’s evidence to be honest and reliable, “in the sense that it could be relied upon to exclude a reasonable possibility consistent with the applicant’s innocence”.

They also wrote trial Judge Sarah Huggett had “regard to all the evidence when reaching her ultimate conclusion as to the applicant’s guilt”.

Justices Stern, McNaughton, and Hamill found AB’s allegation that the first instance of sexual intercourse happened in or around the same week as the first time Dawson kissed her was “strongly supported by the evidence the trial judge relied upon”.

“The evidence admits of no other reasonable possibility than that the applicant and complainant first had sexual intercourse before the end of her year 11.”

Justice Peter Hamill dissented on the issue of reasonableness, writing that Dawson suffered a forensic disadvantage in proving his innocence due to the long delay in bringing the matter to trial.

“First, there were significant issues about the timing of the observations made by the witnesses, each of whom were no doubt doing their best to be accurate four decades after the events in question. However, the effluxion of time created difficulties for each one of them,” Justice Hamill wrote.

“Secondly, accepted at its highest, the evidence proved intimacy, physical attraction, the development of a forbidden love and, perhaps on the applicant’s part, an infatuation with the complainant … but it did not establish to the exclusion of all other possible inferences, that sexual intercourse took place in 1980.”

The Australian’s National Chief Correspondent Hedley Thomas investigated Lynette Dawson’s unsolved disappearance in The Teacher’s Pet podcast.

Dawson was the subject of The Australian’s chart-topping investigative podcast The Teacher’s Pet, released in 2018.

He was convicted of the murder of his first wife, Lynette Simms, by Justice Ian Harrison in 2022 and sentenced to 24 years in prison with a non-parole period of 18 years.

Lynette Dawson.

Dawson has applied for special leave to appeal the murder conviction in the High Court of Australia, with the matter set for consideration next week.