One man, two dead underage girls – and a litany of failure

Damien Dawson was manic. Inside his brick bungalow, an underage girl – three decades his junior – lay dead in the lounge room.

Damien Dawson, at his home in Armidale, refused to discuss his relationship with either of the girls.

Damien Dawson was manic.

“Wake up,” he screamed from inside his low-set brick bungalow.

“Oh f..k, not again.”

Inside, an underage girl – three decades his junior – lay dead in the lounge room.

It had been six months since the 15-year-old – known only as Becky after a coronial inquest into her death issued a non-publication order – had left her carer’s home and begun living couch to couch.

And it had been three years since Becky’s grandparents had found pills and blades in her ugg boots – and later a diary which documented thoughts of suicide.

“I hate myself so much it hurts,” Becky wrote on December 14, 2012. “I want to die.”

Despite that discovery, those managing Becky’s care at Life Without Barriers – a major provider of foster services – appeared to do little to stave off disaster in a life that was quickly unravelling.

But Becky did not kill herself.

She was found by paramedics, warm to the touch, having taken a fatal dose of ice and methadone.

Dawson, it later turned out, had been through all this before

His former girlfriend, Amber Stewart – also underage and many years his junior – had been found dead in March 2000 in eerily similar circumstances.

The 14-year-old became perhaps the country’s youngest victim of a heroin overdose after injecting the drug in a grimy apartment belonging to one of Dawson’s mates.

Both girls had been vulnerable young teenagers known to child protection officials, and both had died from overdoses after becoming entangled with the much older Dawson – a low-level criminal, junkie and drug dealer – in Armidale, a prosperous New England farming town north of Sydney.

And while no criminal charges are likely to be made relating to the death of Becky, police investigators have turned their attention to the possibility the matter could now help prosecute Dawson with sex crimes allegedly committed more than two decades ago.

NSW Police say the coronial inquest into Becky’s death has led them to reconsider whether Dawson could be charged for the sexual assault of a minor – in relation to Amber Stewart.

“Following the coronial inquest findings delivered earlier this year, New England Police District is currently finalising a review of all evidence and will be consulting with the Director of Public Prosecutions in relation to possible charges,” a NSW Police spokeswoman said.

Amber may have been dead for more than an hour before Mark Orman, a friend of Dawson’s, called paramedics to his flat behind the Jessie St shops in Armidale on March 8, 2000.

Orman, 27 at the time, gave multiple versions of what happened. He told ambulance officers that Amber was fine when he went out at 8.30pm and was dead on his return 20 minutes later.

He told police she was alive at 7pm when he went for a beer but was dead by 7.30pm.

What is clear is that Amber had taken a serious quantity of heroin.

The inquest following Amber’s death waded through Armidale’s dark side, a town better known for its historic buildings, sprawling parklands and prestigious private schools than its crime rate.

But life was far from prosperous for Dawson. A junkie and small-time drug dealer who had spent time in jail for robbery, he lived from dole cheques to dole cheque selling heroin for his dealer to pay for his own use.

He denied suggestions by police he may have been “running” Amber as a prostitute to pay for his habit. “Just lies. Lies,” Dawson told a coronial inquiry.

Orman blamed Dawson for introducing Amber to hard drugs and said he had been trying to help her get clean. “He is a sort of friend of mine but he got her hooked up on heroin,” Orman said. “I was trying to straighten her out.”

Dawson, who was not at the flat when Amber died, has bristled at any suggestion he had anything to do with her death.

“I’d really like to know (how she died) myself,” he later said.

“I’ve heard several different things. I’ve heard her and Orman were there shooting up heroin, smoking heroin, taking pills, drinking. I heard she was lying there with no clothes on, I’ve heard he freaked out and ran three blocks up the road to his mate’s house, you know. I honestly don’t know myself.”

While Dawson admitted to a relationship with Amber, he said he was unaware she was just 14 when they were together and tried to break it off after discovering her real age – only to take her back after she turned up at his house “freaking out”.

But Amber’s sister, Leanne Stewart, told an inquiry Dawson was fully aware of her age and that in February 2000 – just one month before her death – police discussed the possibility of taking criminal action against him.

“(Amber) said she felt it was a little ridiculous since she – you know, she – it was given with her permission,” Leanne told the inquiry. “But Amber said he was fully aware of her age at all times.”

While the coronial inquest found it was likely Amber “began injecting heroin during her association with Dawson”, no charges were filed against him.

Police officers in Armidale had inadvertently destroyed valuable evidence – including the syringe she is believed to have used – and investigators concluded it would be too difficult to prosecute.

The first overdose victim Amber Stewart.

Eerie similarity

Sixteen years later, and the police investigation into Becky’s death was similarly troubled.

“The death of a 15-year-old girl by a drug overdose in the house of a 42-year-old man who was known to police for: heroin addiction, amphetamine supply, being involved in a relationship with an underage girl who was found overdosed on heroin, ought to have immediately indicated the need for a more careful and thorough investigation of Mr Dawson and his house,” said Carmel Forbes, the NSW deputy coroner running the inquiry into the death.

Becky’s former carer – who also cannot be identified – told The Weekend Australian that the police investigation into her relative’s death was “woefully inadequate”. She was not contacted by authorities until October 2019, three years after Becky had died.

Ms Forbes, in her findings, concluded that while police formed the opinion that the drugs which had killed Becky had come from an earlier party the 15-year-old had attended, it was more likely that they had been obtained from Dawson himself.

Indeed, in the days leading up to her death, Becky and Dawson had exchanged a series of messages on Facebook. “You still need a pipe,” Dawson asked less than 48 hours before Becky’s death.

“Got something 4 you shortly come over at like 1-30, 2-00 tomorrow I will be only one here.”

Contradictions

David Garland was standing outside his Brown St home at 3.30am when he saw two young girls jump out of a grey car and walk into Dawson’s home.

It was Becky and her friend.

The second girl soon grew bored and left. Dawson told the inquest that Becky had been out of it from the moment she arrived at his family’s home, saying she “had eyes like sources (sic), they were wide open and large”.

They went across the road to Armidale railway station looking for cigarette butts. Becky, Dawson said, fell asleep soon after.

“As soon as her head hit the pillow she was out to it and I went back to my bedroom,” he said. “(I went) online on Facebook using my Xbox for about nine minutes and I must have fallen asleep.”

He said when he woke at about 2pm that afternoon, Becky was lying on the couch but was unresponsive. Panic-stricken, he ran outside and asked a passing salesman in a white van to call for help.

Despite Dawson’s protestations, Ms Forbes found that “on balance” the drugs that killed Becky were obtained at his house and that “the most likely scenario is that Becky ingested the methadone and methylamphetamine within a few hours of her death”.

“Having assessed Mr Dawson’s demeanour in the witness box, and portions of his evidence which are clearly contradicted by other objective evidence tendered in this inquest, in my opinion Mr Dawson was being dishonest about the drugs he was supplying to Becky,” she found. “This affects the credibility of the totality of his evidence – most particularly, his evidence on whether Becky obtained the methadone from him.

“Adding to this suspicion is Mr Dawson’s history. In 2000, Mr Dawson had been investigated for having a sexual relationship with a 14-year-old child-in-care.”

Despite the findings, those closest to the case say it is unlikely Dawson will ever face charges due to the botched investigation and lack of physical evidence against him.

Dawson, now 47, still lives with his parents in the home where Becky died. He refused to discuss his relationship with either of the girls when approached by The Weekend Australian this week.

How Becky ended up dead on Dawson’s couch is unclear, although it is hard to overlook a failure of both NSW child protection authorities or her case managers at LWB to intervene when things began to go wrong.

Becky had spent much of her short life living with extended family members and in state care after her mother – who also battled drug addiction – died when Becky was very young.

Despite her traumatic childhood, Becky was a bright student. She was placed in a selective high school class and later moved to a more prestigious private school.

By 2012, however, things had taken a turn for the worse. Her grandparents had found her diaries, and raised their concerns with LWB, who were overseeing the management of Becky’s case.

Becky’s grandparents had found pills and blades in her ugg boots, and later an extensive diary which documented, over dozens of pages, thoughts of suicide.

Failure to protect

A confidential report into the handling of the matter by ACER Associates, handed down 18 months after Becky’s death, found extensive systemic problems.

“The picture is one of (Becky)’s life unravelling; rejection by her Sydney relatives, changes in school, vitriolic diary entries of self-loathing and anger, numerous instances of self-harm by cutting herself with blades and finally from August to December 2015 rejecting options to live with (several members of her close family) … effectively becoming homeless,” the review says.

An initial assessment of Becky by NSW Family & Community Services, ACER Associates found, “provided no sense of looking ahead to the time when (she) would be an adolescent and searching for her identity, perhaps searching to make sense of her mother’s death. The document itself is poor quality, evidently not having been checked for basic accuracy”. Even her grandmother’s name was spelt incorrectly.

A second assessment undertaken in February 2013, before her transfer into LWB’s care but after her diaries were discovered, showed “no indication that any weight was given to the possibility that (Becky) may have been thinking seriously about self-harm”.

A LWB spokeswoman told The Weekend Australian that the organisation had already implemented changes in response to the review to ensure they could “do our utmost, above and beyond for children and young people”, adding a large number of changes had been made including the establishment of a panel for children with complex needs.

“In response to (the review), Life Without Barriers has established a panel of external clinicians to whom we formally refer children that require support, based on their individual needs and in consultation with doctors, case workers, other providers and the young person themselves.”

Amber had also been known to child protection authorities, at the time known as the Department of Community Services, in the years before her overdose.

Some family solace

She had first appeared on the radar of child-protection officers in 1997 and, by July 1999, DOCS was aware she was in a relationship with Dawson, homeless and using heroin. There was no doubt, a coronial inquest concluded, that “bureaucratic bungling” had let to her allowance being paid directly to her bank account.

“I have no doubt that she purchased the heroin that killed her with that allowance,” the then coroner, John Abernethy, wrote.

But, Mr Abernethy concluded, it was important agency officers were “not criticised undeservedly over Amber’s tragic death”.

It’s the same view that some of Becky’s family have also come to – that Dawson was more accountable for the role he played in the troubled teen’s death than having state bureaucrats admonished for their failure to keep her safe.

For now at least, they will be left to take solace in the fact that the loss of their little girl may finally see him face tough questions about his relationship with Amber – and help provide her family with the answers they have been seeking since she died in that grubby Armidale apartment more than two decades ago.

If you or someone you know may be at risk of suicide, call Lifeline (131114), Kids Helpline (1800 551 800), Beyond Blue (1300 224 636)