Queensland couple awarded $280,000 from neighbour’s ‘paedophile’ Facebook slur

A Queensland woman has been ordered to pay her neighbours almost $300,000 over a single Facebook post.

A Queensland woman has been ordered to pay her neighbours almost $300,000 over a defamatory Facebook post.

A Queensland woman has been ordered to pay almost $300,000 to her former neighbours for a post she made on social media.

Zoe Anne Gooding was ordered to pay $280,000 in damages and interest. to defacto couple, Mianka Rodgers and Michael Usher, by District Court Judge John Coker on Friday June 23.

The north Queensland couple abandoned their dream to be foster parents after they were both falsely called paedophiles by their neighbour on Facebook.

The $280,000 award includes a $15,000 payment to Michael Usher to compensate him for being run over by Ms Gooding’s car after she hit him after he sued her, leaving him with a fractured rotator cuff and three broken ribs.

Ms Gooding posted to the Bushland Beach Crime Alert group on Facebook “Paedophile Holbourne Street” on September 10, 2021.

Bushland Beach is a small tight-knit coastal suburb in the Northern Beaches area of Townsville and the two families lived in a quiet cul-de-sac where everyone knew each other and there were often community parties.

Ms Gooding followed up with two comments in response to queries from other Facebook users: “When it’s your kid being touched then you wouldn’t be saying it’s a wild accusation”, and when asked “how do you know?” she replied: “We know cos they tried getting our 6 year old to go with them multiple times”.

Ms Gooding also made things worse by falsely claiming her Facebook account had been hacked and she was not responsible for the paedophile comment.

“Hi everyone. So looked like my fb had been hacked. Neighbour just went mental and we were wondering why. Have reset my settings. Apologies” she wrote.

Judge Coker stated that other members of the Facebook group, “perhaps showing some incredulity at such a suggestion responded”, including one post which said: “You put a post up about a paedophile and there apparent address. Gonna need a bit more explaining than “we got hacked”.

A Townsville couple had to abandon their dream to be foster parents after they were both falsely called paedophiles by their neighbour on Facebook.

The damages awarded also includes a total of $65,000 in aggravated damages, part of which is due to Ms Gooding’s failure to apologise for the false post.

Judge Coker stated in his reasons that Ms Gooding “should have but did not retract the publication, pronouncing its falsity to those members of the group who saw the publication let, as it is put, “the stain of the publication remain”.

Up until September 2021 Ms Gooding lived right next door to Ms Rodgers and Mr Usher, and “the families were friendly” with Ms Gooding, her then-husband and child visiting and swimming in their pool or attending neighbourhood social events or Christmas barbecues.

Judge Coker ruled that the damages award reflected that Ms Rodgers and Mr Usher’s reputations were gravely injured as an untrue allegation of paedophilia was “of the worst possible kind” and the “it is extremely difficult if not impossible to remove the stain or smear of that kind of statement”.

The damages also reflected the need for vindication, due to the real probability of the couple suffering “a permanent stain from the defamatory imputations”.

Judge Coker noted that Ms Rodgers and Mr Usher had planned to become foster parents before Ms Gooding posted the comment online, but they have abandoned this dream.

Judge Coker stated that Ms Gooding appeared to “still lay blame for her circumstances at the feet of” Mr Usher, claiming that she “fled” Bushland Beach “due to Mr Usher’s threats of violence” of which there was no evidence that Mr Usher had ever threatened violence.

When Ms Gooding made the defamatory post there were between 4800 and 4900 people registered as members of the Bushland Beach Crime Alert group and it was “live” on the Facebook page for at least one and a-half hours.

Ms Rodgers and Mr Usher said the post caused them to lose their community and neighbourhood relationships and they felt ostracised within the community.

Ms Rodgers told the court that she spoke with about 30 or 40 people in or about Holbourne Street and they told her they knew about the post.

In November 2022, Ms Gooding emailed parties to the case stating that she was living “in a women’s shelter in north Brisbane and have no capacity to return to Townsville to attend”.

“To be blunt it was foolhardy of your clients to proceed with the matter as it was known to them that I was poor,” she stated in the email.

When Ms Gooding posted the comment, Ms Rodgers was worked as a FIFO chef at the Moranbah North Coal Mine, she learned of the post after Mr Usher sent her a copy.

Ms Rodgers told the court that she and Mr Usher felt they “had no choice but to take steps to try and restore our reputation as best we could”.

“It is important that people understood clearly that Mick and I are not paedophiles. However, I do not believe that whatever we do we will ever be able to wash the stain away entirely. Zoe Gooding has by her conduct detrimentally affected our lives forever.”

Mr Usher told the court he feared he might be subject to reprisals, and a colleague at his work at Tacoma Plumbing asked him if he was the person referred to in the paedophile post.

“I told him I thought so and he just laughed at me saying what a joke,” Mr Usher told the court.