Psychic helped Chris Dawson's daughter accept his guilt

In an interview with Women's Weekly, Shanelle Dawson said she still held conflicted feelings about her father, who was convicted of killing his wife Lynette last year - but hoped one day she would be able to forgive him.

She also revealed a psychic helped her believe in her father's guilt and that he might not even remember the murder himself.

Chris Dawson was jailed for at least 18 years after a court found him guilty of murdering Lynette and disposing of her body four decades ago.

Ms Dawson said watching last year's highly-publicised guilty verdict brought mixed feelings of despair and relief.

"There was no rejoicing; it's heartbreaking for me to know he will likely die behind bars," she said.

Telling her own daughter what her father had done meant confronting parts of herself forever changed by his actions, Ms Dawson told the publication.

"Once I became a mother, things shifted internally for me," she said.

"What had been taken away from me now extended to my child.

"There's a part of me that's broken.

"I haven't really, fully trusted people again."

She also expressed her anguish at being "cut out" by others in her family.

"I feel like I'm the scapegoat," she said.

"Why am I the one being cut out?

"I didn't do anything wrong."

In handing down Dawson's sentence earlier this year, Justice Ian Harrison said the murder was inspired by an "uncontrollable desire" to be with his teenage lover.

"Lynette Dawson was faultless and undeserving of her fate," he said.

"Despite the deteriorating state of her marriage to Mr Dawson, she was undoubtedly also completely unsuspecting

"Tragically her death deprived her young daughters of their mother so that a significant part of the harm caused to others as a consequence of her death, is the sad fact that Lynette Dawson was treated by her husband, the father of the very same girls, as completely dispensable."

Australian Associated Press