‘I still have trouble sleeping’: The impact of ‘relentless’ online defamation
“Relentless”. That’s how family law mediator Jasmin Newman describes Adam Whittington’s online vendetta against her.
Whittington, a self-styled child recovery expert, was at the heart of a bungled 60 Minutes attempt to reunite two Australian children with their mother that led to the crew spending two weeks in a Beirut prison. He undertook a years-long online campaign that characterised Newman as variously sympathetic to paedophiles, a fraudster and misrepresenting her qualifications.
Jasmin Newman at home after the Supreme Court verdict.Credit: Dan Peled
60 Minutes is broadcast by Nine, owner of this masthead.
“The harassment began in 2019, and as of the 13th February, he hasn’t stopped,” she told the Herald, speaking for the first time after the NSW Supreme Court in March concluded Whittington must pay more than $300,000 in aggravated damages and costs for the six years of inflammatory posts that spanned Facebook, Twitter and WordPress.
Newman came to Whittington’s attention when she wrote a book about international family-child abduction cases, including what she called “the Lebanon debacle”, drawing on her expertise in mediating family conflicts.
Self-styled child recovery expert Adam Whittington. Credit: Facebook
“The purpose was to bring attention to these kinds of matters and the complex nature of intercultural marriages and difficulties of different jurisdictions in parenting matters,” she said.
When Whittington learnt of the book, his response was swift and brutal.
“He called me a paedophile sympathiser, a fraudster, a scammer,” she said. None of these allegations are true.
“It went on for years.”
In one email to her barrister late last year, Whittington vowed, “Your scumbag client won’t get one cent”. In a post to social media after defamation proceedings began, Whittington wrote: “Under Australian law, those who share defamatory material are guilty of defamation. I will never be silenced … think of me like a pit [sic] bull dog,” according to a Supreme Court affidavit seen by this masthead.
Months after the judgment, Whittington has yet to pay the damages ordered and has failed to remove previous defamatory posts.
Newman said the cost to her has been immense.
“I still have trouble sleeping,” she said. “I get anxiety. If he had posted something, I would lose my mind – I get anxious, that triggering feeling. I try and read it and I can’t, all the words blur, I lose concentration. At those times, it’s really, really hard.”
A British-Australian dual national who lives in Russia and spends time in Sweden, Whittington did not attend the proceedings on Elizabeth Street.
Last year, the former soldier’s charity Project Rescue Children (PRC) was deregistered by the Australian charity watchdog days before a BBC investigation claimed the rescues cited by it were fake.
“The right to free speech in Australia has been significantly curtailed. While certain systems and journalists protect paedophiles, and their sympathisers, I remain steadfast in my commitment to expose the truth,” Whittington said in a statement to the Herald that cannot be published in full for legal reasons.
Despite deregistration in Australia, Project Rescue Children appears as busy as ever. In an Instagram post from March 25, the charity claims to have worked with the Philippines’ National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) to liberate four girls and 15 women from human traffickers.
The NBI’s website has not published any information about the matter and did not respond to the Herald’s questions. Last year, Project Rescue Children “provided information” to the policing body, a media release on its website says.
An Instagram post from a week ago boasted of “44 trafficked children rescued and now free”, “[six] children saved from online grooming” and “[Seven] traffickers arrested and charged” in the first quarter of 2025.
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