Chris Dawson’s estranged daughter has spoken publicly for the first time since her father was found guilty of killing her mother Lynette and has claimed she knows where her mother is buried.
In an interview with 60 Minutes, Shanelle Dawson said that she uncovered memories of her father burying her mother under the family pool while under hypnosis.
Ms Dawson was four years old when her mother disappeared from their family home in Bayview.
Her father told officers during his single police interview that he had dropped Lynette off at a bus stop in Mona Vale and that she had failed to meet up with him at the Northbridge Baths.
For 40 years, Ms Dawson said her father told her that Lynette had run away.
But, Ms Dawson said she has different memories about what happened, which were uncovered during a 2013 hypnosis session led by Detective Damian Loone, who was the officer in charge of the case.
“It was like I could feel myself as a four-and-a-half-year-old child again,” she said.
“I could feel the feelings that she felt at the time. It was really pretty profound.
“I believe I saw my sister and I in the back of a car, of our station wagon, and my mother slumped in the front.
“I believe I saw him shining headlights on a spot near the pool and digging. I believe that he buried her in that spot for that night, and then the next day when he didn’t have us kids, moved her somewhere else.”
While she accepted that some would question how much of her recollection was real, when asked whether she believed they were real memories, Ms Dawson said: “I think they are, yes.”
Ms Dawson also spoke of the “toxic” and “manipulative” environment she grew up in after her mother vanished.
“I could see that he was manipulative and gaslighting us all the time,” she said in an interview broadcast on Sunday night.
“My father definitely embodies the survival of the fittest, f*** everyone else. Just do what you need to do to get what you want.
“And I feel a lot of anger and rage towards him for being that way, but I simultaneously feel compassion and sadness that he is that way.”
Lynette’s death created a schism in the family, with Ms Dawson explaining that she had been cut off by her father’s side of the family and her sister, who supports him.
In the last text message she sent to her father, three months before his 2018 arrest, Ms Dawson confronted him about what happened to her mother and asked him to take responsibility.
“I won’t live a life based on lies, nor will I keep subjecting myself to emotional manipulation and control,” she said in the message.
“You have dishonoured our mother so terribly, and also my sister and I, through all of this. No more. One day I will forgive you for removing her so selfishly from our lives.”
Ms Dawson told 60 Minutes that her father replied and blamed her instead.
“You are clearly very lonely and depressed in the life you have chosen,” he said.
“You know very little about what was going on in my life, or your sister’s. It is your adult life, now 41, with a child and without a partner. That has clearly caused this terrible depression.
“We all, unfortunately, have to live with the choices we make. I OWN my poor choices, and you never need to remind me of them.”
In the days after Lynette was last seen, Dawson moved JC, the family’s 17-year-old babysitter, into the family’s home.
During her testimony, JC told the Supreme Court that she was groomed by Dawson, who was a teacher at her high school, from a young age.
While Ms Dawson said she didn’t blame JC for what happened, she felt like the babysitter could have acted differently.
“I feel very sad for her. I feel sad that I don’t know why she made the choices she did,” Ms Dawson said.
“I know for myself having babysat and nannies in multiple, multiple homes … And thankfully none of those dads ever hit on me.
“But I know as a 17-year-old, I still would’ve had the capacity, even with my background, to say, ‘no, that’s not okay. You’re a married man’.”
Victims of grooming are manipulated and coerced by their abusers, who are usually members of the victim’s circle of trust, such as family members and teachers.
While many of us believe we wouldn’t fall for these tactics, children, teenagers and even vulnerable adults are at risk of grooming and two out of three victims in the US are aged between 12 and 17, according to RAINN.
The interview comes after Dawson was found guilty of murdering Lynette by Justice Ian Harrison in August.
“I heard them say, ‘Chris Dawson, I find you guilty’ and I was just in shock,” Ms Dawson said.
“I just couldn’t fathom it really. It just felt so surreal.”
Images: 60 Minutes
This article first appeared on OverSixty.