Chris Dawson learns his fate for sex with a student in his Year 11 PE class – as details emerge about his sickening flirtatious notes

Woman killer Chris Dawson has been given a year on top of his already lengthy prison sentence for engaging in unlawful sexual activity with an underage student.

Dawson faced Sydney’s Downing Center District Court on Friday to be sentenced after being found guilty of one charge of carnal knowledge earlier this year.

Dawson, 75, dressed in prison greens, appeared via video link from Long Bay Jail in Sydney’s eastern suburbs.

“I can hear you, yes I can,” he told the court as he was brought on screen.

The former Newtown Jets star and teacher has already been told he will die in prison after being sentenced to a minimum of 18 years for the murder of his wife Lynette in early 1982.

Judge Sarah Huggett sentenced Dawson to a further three years in prison on Friday for his carnal knowledge conviction.

A year was effectively added to his non-parole period, meaning he won’t be eligible for release until August 2041.

Judge Huggett found Dawson guilty in June of sex acts with a then 16-year-old student, who can only be known as AB, when she was in his Grade 11 gymnasium class.

He had pleaded not guilty and argued that their first sexual contact did not occur until the following year, when she was twelve years old.

However, Judge Huggett accepted AB’s testimony that she had been ‘groomed’ by Dawson in the playground before they first engaged in sexual activity at his parents’ home in Maroubra in the second half of 1980.

“I was told to keep it a secret,” AB said in her court testimony.

Dawson has filed a notice of intent to appeal his conviction.

The court previously heard that AB had a tumultuous home life marked by alcohol abuse and that at one point she saw Dawson as a mentor and trusted adult.

She told the court that Dawson told her he had deliberately changed the role of the class so that she would be in his class in Year 11.

“The Crown points to what is presented as steps of grooming and exploitation of the victim’s vulnerability,” Crown prosecutor Emma Blizard told the court on Friday.

Defense lawyer Claire Wasley argued that since AB was 16, which was at the top end of the age range for the crime, this should have an impact on the objective seriousness of Dawson’s crime.

Judge Huggett ruled that AB’s allegations were supported by a ‘large body of independent’ evidence.

AB testified that Dawson left “hundreds” of love notes in her school bag and gave her cards on special occasions.

One card, dated Christmas 1980, read ‘once or twice a minute’ and was signed off as ‘God’.

AB told the court that the reference to ‘God’ was an attempt to disguise himself because he knew she was 16 years old.

In another card from 1981, Dawson wrote: “To the most beautiful girl in the world on her 17th birthday, knowing we will share all future birthdays, very sweet.”

The court was also read an extract from her year 11 report, in which Dawson wrote that she was ‘a pleasure to teach’.

‘(AB) worked well in the classroom and made valuable contributions in discussions. A very pleasant personality, a pleasure to teach,” Dawson wrote on the report.

During her testimony, AB claimed that “pleasure to teach” was a double entender referring to their sexual activities

“He was referring to the lessons I had learned in sexual activity that he had taught me,” AB said.

A man who worked at the same supermarket as AB as a teenager told the court he was threatened by Dawson in a darkened car park in 1980.

The man told the court that he was in love with her at the time and had asked her out several times.

He said he was working on a Saturday morning when he was approached by Dawson while picking up carts in the parking lot.

He said Dawson came “out of the shadows” and backed him up against a concrete ramp, warning him with words to the effect of: “Stay away from her, don’t come near her.”

Dawson was found guilty last year of murdering his wife Lynette, who disappeared from their Bayview home on Sydney’s northern beaches in January 1982.

Judge Ian Harrison sentenced Dawson to 24 years in prison, with a non-parole period of 18 years expiring on August 29, 2040.