In the last few years, I’ve become a serious podcast addict. I listen to them whilst I read work emails, whilst I’m sitting at the beach with a coffee, whilst I’m cooking dinner and in bed at night, before I drift off to sleep.
I could probably devote an entire website just to what I’m listening to, since no doubt it amounts to hours and hours a week…but today I’m putting pen to paper (or fingers to keys) about ‘The Teacher’s Pet’ - a terrific and quite riveting listen that comes all the way from Down Under.
Let’s set the scene: Chris and Lynette Dawson are living the dream in the Sydney suburbs - they have (on the surface) a happy marriage, a beautiful home close to the beach, and two young children, Chris (once a rugby star and local hero) is a high school teacher and Lyn a devoted mother.
Photo courtesy of Simms Family/ABC Backstory
All good, no? Well, not quite. Because, in January 1982, Lyn disappeared without a trace, leaving behind her children, her personal belongings and no note.
As if this were not enough, just a few days later, a 16-year old pupil of Chris - named Joanne Curtis - who had babysat the children on previous occasions, moved into the family home. In no time at all, she was dressing in Lyn’s clothes, telling the children to call her ‘mummy’ and even wearing her wedding ring.
Astonishingly, even though there were many red flags raised (in the form of domestic abuse and the fact that Chris had begun an intense sexual relationship with Joanne before his wife’s disappearance) the police showed little interest in pursuing the matter. Leads were not chased up, Chris’s explanation that his wife had ‘run away and joined a religious sect’ was considered by them to be reasonable and, as a result, Lyn was declared a ‘runaway mother.’
With the minimum of fuss, he was granted a divorce, gained custody of his two daughters, and the house he and Lyn jointly owned and he was left to continue on with his life, Joanne raising his two girls and bearing him a third. And for the best part of 40 years, Chris thought he was home and dry.
Joanne Curtis with Lyn’s daughters and her biological daughter, Kirsten (origin unknown)
Enter Hedley Thomas, award–winning correspondence for ‘The Australian’ who, over the course of 14 episodes (many of them quite long) tells the appalling story of twin brothers who were too close to comfort, a young student groomed by her teacher and the probable murder and subsequent burial of Lyn, in land close to home.
What Thomas really excels at, however, is how both the Sydney police and the national judicial system clearly let down Lyn, with Chris remaining a free man, despite the very suspicious (and quite terrifying) circumstances under which his wife had vanished.
This podcast was first downloaded in May 2018 and, once you;’ve listened to it, you’ll realise just how much time and effort Thomas put into his quest for justice for for a woman who had suffered so terribly at her husband’s hand. I don’t want to give too much away but suffice it to say, the garden of their Bayview home was dug up and, furthermore, two subsequent inquests concluded that Lyn had been killed by a person known to her.
Thomas does a fine job of investigating the circumstances of Lyn’s probable murder, not to mention Chris’s affair with his student Joanne and the disturbing culture of high-school paedophilia, with teachers preying upon students whilst locals and police turned the proverbial blind eye. And it’s probably fair to say that without this podcast, the quest by Lyn’s family for justice for her would have never been answered.
However, in December 2018, Chris Dawson was formally charged with the murder of his wife and a trial date set. Was he convicted? I don’t want to say (although you can find out easily enough, courtesy of Google). I’d recommend that you listen to the podcast first, before you read about the verdict. After all, 60 million listeners (yeah, you read correctly) can’t be wrong…
Chapeau, Mr Thomas, in your attempts to right a terrible wrong.