‘You’ll do whatever it takes to get your child’: Aussie parents who share Sally Faulkner’s pain

A FATHER who flew overseas to get his child with an agent and TV crew says he understands how Sally Faulkner got into this mess.

Sally Faulkner has been detained in Lebanon after attempting to retrieve her children (Lahlea, aged 5 (L) and Noah, aged 2 (R)) from her ex-husband. Source: FACEBOOK

AN AUSTRALIAN father who flew overseas to get his daughter with a recovery agent and TV crew says he understands how 60 Minutes and Sally Faulkner got into the mess they’re in.

Adam Watts* had no contact with his daughter for five years after his ex-wife kidnapped her and took her to Indonesia.

After spending years and a small fortune fighting through the courts, he felt he had no options left but to take matters into his own hands and try to get her back himself.

“For me, I absolutely understand her motivations, because I was in a very similar place,” Mr Watts, from Victoria, told news.com.au. “I never stopped fighting. You try all legal avenues and it becomes frustrating, court orders are not responded to, it’s a last resort.

“For five years, my child wasn’t allowed to have a conversation with me. You’re deprived of your child and they’re deprived of you.

“When you’re in that situation, you’ll do whatever it takes to get your child.”

Brisbane mother Ms Faulkner is expected to appear in a Lebanese court today alongside 60 Minutes reporter Tara Brown, senior producer Stephen Rice, cameraman Ben Williamson and sound recordist David Ballment.

They are among nine people charged over a botched attempt to recover Ms Faulkner’s two children from their father in the Beirut suburb of Hadath.

Neither Lebanon or Indonesia are party to The Hague Convention, which deals with international child access. While Australia’s Family Court could have arranged for co-parenting, Mr Watts says he was instead stopped from having any contact at all with his daughter.

Patricia Nunez’s sons were taken to Disneyland by their father in January 2013. They never came back.

It’s a heartbreakingly common story. Sydney mum Patricia Nunez’s sons Peyton, 11, and Nathaniel, 7, set off for a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Disneyland with their father in January 2013. Her kids are believed to be in Taiwan, which is also not signed up to The Hague Convention. “The last time I spoke to my children was the day before they were due to fly back to Australia,” Ms Nunez told news.com.au. “I have had no contact since.

“I want them to know that I have never stopped loving them, I have never stopped looking for them.”

Ms Nunez stopped short of employing a “child recovery specialist”, but Ms Faulkner and Mr Watts felt they had no other option left.

Father of one Mr Watts told news.com.au many of the so-called experts “fed me bulls***”, demanding upfront payments of $60,000 before even knowing the details of the case.

“It deflates you when you’re already in that situation where you’re crumbling.”

In the end, Mr Watts hired Colin Chapman, who has been vocal in his criticism of the 60 Minutes operation in Lebanon, run by one of his competitors, CARI.

Mr Chapman spent two years discussing the case with Mr Watts, without charging anything. He then contacted Al Jazeera, who travelled with the recovery team to film the efforts to bring the little girl back to Australia.

Claire (left) and Emily Vincenti (right) told Tara Brown they felt their parents were “selfish” in their abduction case. Picture: 60 Minutes

The filmmakers, whose documentary Bringing Them Home aired in Australia last October, admitted at the time to concern over what some see as child recovery experts’ vigilante techniques.

“My personal struggle was how potentially traumatic this could be for [his daughter],” director Steve Chao told news.com.au.

“The fact that a father she hadn’t seen in five years would try to get her back, the idea of stealing her back. When things started falling apart, it was a struggle seeing Adam.”

Mr Watts was concerned about the operation, too. He was told to hire a car, and then discovered he could not do so without employing a driver, too. He was surprised Mr Chapman hadn’t researched how they would get around in secret.

It was the Al Jazeera crew who were up early each day staking out the child’s primary school, he said, while Mr Chapman’s team “had a sleep-in”.

But unlike 60 Minutes, Ms Faulkner and CARI, the group decided it was too dangerous to grab the little girl from the street at the school with so many others around.

Instead, they followed the child to her house and persuaded her mother to allow Mr Watts to enter. He has visited his daughter twice since, and has regular Skype calls with her.

While the situation is not “ideal”, he’s glad he didn’t take the extra step Ms Faulkner did.

“I always said, if it got to the point where my daughter could get hurt, I don’t want to do it,” he said. “I didn’t want to create a tug of war with my daughter in the middle.”

The real victims in these cases are, of course, the children. Last April, the Vincenti sisters spoke to Tara Brown on 60 Minutes about being at the centre of one of the most bitter and public parental disputes in living memory.

Claire and Emily’s hysterical reaction when they were torn from their mother and sent back to their father in Italy three years earlier shocked the world.

But they admitted they are now happy in Italy, love both their parents and are only disappointed they were put in the middle.

“I think they were thinking more about themselves than us, you know, because we were put at the centre of this whole situation,” said Claire. “I don’t know, they were a little bit selfish.”