Australian TV star Charlotte Dawson found dead of apparent suicide

Model-TV presenter Charlotte Dawson, best known for being a judge on ‘Australia’s Next Top Model’, has been found dead at her home. She was 47.

Dawson, who had a history with depression, was found dead in her Woolloomooloo apartment in Sydney yesterday. Police said there were no suspicious circumstances, Herald Sun reported.

A realtor had entered Dawson’s two-bedroom Sydney apartment to prepare it for a viewing yesterday when he found her body and informed the police, reported People magazine.

Authorities say there were no suspicious circumstances surrounding her death.

Dawson professed her enduring love for Miller and sadness at his fall from grace ahead of Australian 60 Minutes broadcasting an exclusive interview with him on Feb. 16.

The social media war that put Dawson in hospital after an attempt on her life in 2012 started after the star tracked down one alleged Twitter hater. After a TV interview, Dawson revealed more than 100 messages of abuse, which she re-tweeted.

She received threats like “neck yourself you filthy s***” and “please put your face in a toaster”, images of bloody dead bodies and a request to “please hang yourself promptly.”

Dawson’s personal appearance and private life were also subject to social media attacks.

She has previously revealed in her 2005 autobiography Air Kiss & Tell that she was frequently visited by the “depression bogeyman.”

Dawson, 47, had long graced the pages of Southern Hemisphere women’s gossip magazines and reality TV shows. Her modelling career had taken her to Italy, Britain and Germany during the 1980s.

New Zealand-born Dawson was recently in the news after advising rising Kiwi music star Lorde to leave the country, after the 17-year-old claimed on Twitter that her family was pushed and shoved in a media frenzy when she returned from the Grammys, where she won Best Pop Solo Performance for Royals.

Dawson left New Zealand for permanent residence in Australia in 2007, saying at the time that her reputation had been damaged by “nasty snipes” so badly that “I can’t come back because people don’t want to employ me”.

Dawson’s advice to Lorde, “Unless you’re very mediocre you need to get out of there ­— you just have to if you want to keep succeeding otherwise it’ll just crush your spirit.”

In January, Dawson said she was quitting as a judge on Top Model to take up a career in real estate. “I truly adored my time on ANTM but my heart tells me I don’t think young girls should pursue the Modelling world,” she said in tweets at the time.

Today New Zealand Prime Minister John Key tweeted he was “shocked and saddened” by the news of her death.

The Sun-Herald newspaper in Sydney reported on Sunday that her body was found only minutes before her luxury waterside apartment was due to be sold at auction.

Kate Carnell, chief executive of Beyond Blue, a not-for-profit organization promoting depression awareness, criticized Twitter for failing to sign up to an Australian government complaint-handling program designed to remove hateful material from social media sites.

Facebook, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft signed up to the project last year.

“There’s lots more work that people like Twitter need to do,” Carnell told The Sun-Herald.

Agencies/Canadajournal