The Teacher’s Pet: police job to support Lyn Dawson’s kin, A-G says

NSW Attorney-General Mark Speakman insists it is ‘the police’s role’ to deal with relatives of victims of crime.

NSW Attorney-General Mark Speakman. Picture: AAP

NSW Attorney-General Mark Speakman has insisted it is “the police’s role” to deal with relatives of victims after being asked why the DPP failed to tell the family of missing Sydney mother Lyn Dawson of a conflict of interest.

But The Australian understands police — like Lyn’s family — were unaware of Director of Public Prosecutions Lloyd Babb’s connection to murder suspect Chris Dawson until it was revealed as part of the investigative podcast series The Teacher’s Pet.

Mr Babb had removed himself from any involvement in the case because Lyn’s husband and suspected killer Chris Dawson had been his rugby league coach and a teacher at his school.

Mr Babb has said he properly disclosed the conflict to then ­attorney-general Greg Smith and colleagues in the DPP in 2011, the year he was appointed to the role.

At an estimates hearing yesterday, the state opposition asked Mr Speakman if appropriate policies and standards were followed when the DPP failed to inform the family.

“What is important here is to treat sympathetically and sensitively a family that has lived with grief and uncertainty for many decades,” he said. “My understanding is it’s the police’s role to deal directly with family members like that.”

The podcast series has examined Lyn’s disappearance from Sydney’s northern beaches in 1982.

Two coroners found, in 2001 and 2003, that Lyn was killed by her husband and recommended he be prosecuted, but the Office of the DPP has repeatedly refused, citing insufficient evidence.

The Australian has previously revealed police this year asked the DPP to again consider if there was enough evidence to prosecute, following renewed investigations by the Unsolved Homicide Unit.

NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller confirmed during the podcast series that police had given the DPP a new brief of ­evidence.

Since then, Mr Speakman had written to a DPP deputy director “to ask that person to make sure the family is kept informed of developments in the matter”.

He anticipated the DPP would provide police with its advice on the case “within the coming months”.

The estimates hearing was told Lyn’s cousin Wendy Jennings had criticised Mr Babb for acting in a “totally unprofessional and inexcusable manner and showed no respect”.

Mr Speakman replied: “All of us could understand the stress that someone in her position would be going through — ­decades of not knowing what had happened to Ms Dawson.

“But it is the role of the police, rather than the DPP, to maintain contact with people like Ms ­Jennings.”

Asked if he was suggesting it was a failing of police, he said: “I’m not suggesting there is any failing. The practice of the DPP is not to have direct communications with people in Ms Jennings’ position because that’s the support that comes from police.”

Mr Speakman said he did not know whether that information had been passed to police. “My understanding is that the DPP himself has recused himself from any involvement in the matter,” he said. “My understanding is he has never played any active role in analysing or evaluating or considering whatever brief or briefs from time to time the police have delivered to the DPP. That’s always gone to somebody else.”