Dawson was sentenced in September 2023 to three years’ imprisonment, with a non-parole period of two years, to commence at the end of his 24-year prison sentence for Simms’ murder.

The Supreme Court heard Dawson began an affair with the student, known only as AB, when she was under the age of 17 and had been working in his family home as a babysitter. The two went on to be married in 1984, two years after Simms’ disappearance.

In dismissing the appeal, Justices Kristina Stern and Sarah McNaughton found the evidence considered against Dawson in Judge Sarah Huggett’s original decision was “sufficient in nature and quality to eliminate any reasonable doubt as to the applicant’s guilt”.

This included evidence from AB about the first time she and Dawson kissed during a driving lesson when she was 16, the time that elapsed between the kiss and the first time they had sexual intercourse, and her attendance at a fitness class Dawson ran.

While Dawson did not dispute sexual intercourse occurred, he claimed it did not happen until after AB turned 17.

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At the original trial, Judge Huggett accepted evidence of witnesses who observed physical contact between AB and Dawson, including the girl sitting on his lap while they were in his office.

There was also the “powerful evidence” of a birthday card, which included: “Knowing we will share all the birthdays to follow.”

Judge Huggett said this revealed Dawson, a mature man, “was confident in the existence of a reciprocal and permanent relationship and that was because of a sexual relationship had commenced between 1 July 1980 and 12 December 1980”.

While Justices Stern and McNaughton accepted there were some inconsistencies in AB’s evidence, the fact that sexual intercourse occurred while she was still in year 11 “was not undermined by the driving lesson evidence or by the inconsistencies”.

“Viewed in the context of the evidence as a whole, the complainant’s evidence as to the fitness classes and the possibilities it threw up did not give rise to a reasonable doubt that the first instance of sexual intercourse occurred whilst the complainant was in year 11,” they found.

In dissent, Justice Peter Hamill said the evidence did not establish to the exclusion of all other possible interferences that sexual intercourse occurred in 1980, when AB was under the age of 17.

“The reasonable doubt entertained as to the timing of the first act of sexual intercourse cannot be resolved by reference to the trial judge’s advantage in seeing and hearing the witnesses giving their evidence.

“In drawing interferences from the direct evidence, and deciding whether all interferences consistent with innocence has been excluded, the trial court has no discernible advantage over this court,” Justice Hamill determined.

The case is: Dawson v R [2025] NSWCCA 85