Melbourne podcaster Susanna Gbangaye to pay $400k in damages over Janet Dweh murder episode

Melbourne podcaster Susanna Gbangaye promised to tell the “full story” behind the brutal murder of a heavily pregnant woman by her lover. She now has to pay close to $400,000 in damages to the killer’s wife.

A Melbourne podcaster who falsely claimed a woman engaged in witchcraft and helped her ex-husband murder his mistress has been ordered to pay nearly $400,000 in damages.

Susanna Gbangaye, 37, used her platform of more than 32,000 followers to ruin the reputation of Charlene Jabbie, 38, within their shared Liberian-Australian community by spreading “rumours and gossip”, the Supreme Court in Perth found.

Ms Gbangaye made the defamatory claims during a podcast three weeks after Ms Jabbie’s ex-husband, Hassan Jabbie, was charged with murdering Janet Dweh, 36, inside her Perth home in October 2021.

During the two-hour long livestream, Ms Gbangaye claimed Ms Jabbie had played a role in Ms Dweh’s murder, and she was an “evil” and “violent” person.

Ms Gbangaye and Ms Jabbie were known to each other prior to the podcast, having both emigrated to Australia from a refugee camp in Guinea before settling in the same neighbourhood in Perth.

A heavily pregnant Janet Dweh was murdered in 2021. Picture: Supplied

Ms Gbangaye later moved to Melbourne and has since gained a significant following within the Liberian community in Australia through her podcast The Gees, where she shared outspoken views on social and political issues.

Weeks after the death of Ms Dweh, who was bludgeoned to death by Mr Jabbie while she carried their love child, Ms Gbangaye hosted a two-part podcast claiming she would share the “full story” behind the murder.

Extracts from the podcast, documented in Supreme Court judgement, detail claims Ms Gbangaye made, including that she believed “other people” were involved in the murder.

“One way or the other if Hassan (Jabbie) is to be in jail I want to believe that the law in this country that they can push to every extent to find out about the wife too … she’s not innocent … Charlene (Jabbie) is not innocent,” the transcript reads.

“Charlene if you come across this video I am here to clearly tell you that you Charlene will not go free.

“I don’t care how long it is or how long it takes in this system, you Charlene will never go free.”

Ms Gbangaye went on to claim Ms Jabbie was an “evil” and “violent” person, going as far as saying she had engaged in witchcraft and cut a woman’s ear off during their time growing up in Guinea.

The podcast was viewed at least 3,700 times across Ms Gbangaye’s Facebook page and later shared to several accounts each with tens of thousands of followers.

Ms Jabbie told the court she had first become aware of the livestream when her sister said a woman in Melbourne was “saying things” about her.

At first she dismissed the video, telling her mother and sister “let her say what she wants to say” before realising the full extent of the situation.

“I did not view it at the time because I was completely shattered, to be honest, and when I – I only heard a few details of it, but I didn’t know the extent, and then my mother was the one that played a section, the first 24 minutes of it, and I started crying,” Ms Jabbie said.

Gbangaye, 37, made the defamatory claims on her podcast. Picture: Supplied

She said by the time the video was shared online, members of the public had believed what

Ms Gbangaye had said and started targeting her and her children.

“There was picture on Snapchat of me, the video she has shown, that pictures of my children calling, ‘Your dad is this. Your mum is a killer’,” she added.

The fallout of the podcast weighed heavily on Ms Jabbie, with people from overseas asking her about her involvement in Ms Dweh’s murder and one woman confronting her at a local shopping centre.

“There was a lady who came up to me and said: ‘You’re a killer. You are a killer. You deserve to go to jail. No wonder why Susanna say you are a killer’,” Ms Jabbie said.

Ms Jabbie said she had ended up in hospital with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder and been forced to take considerable time off from work at major superannuation firm AustralianSuper which ultimately resulted in her losing her job.

Ms Gbangaye’s video remained on her Facebook page until sometime after September 2022, almost a year on from the original livestream.

Of the 12 defamatory imputations outlined in Ms Jabbie’s case, Ms Gbangaye admitted to making five of the claims, including that Ms Jabbie had physically attacked, verbally abused and threatened Ms Dweh.

Justice Paul Allan Tottle found that Ms Gbangaye had made “plainly defamatory” imputations during the first part of her live stream, adding that he felt she had no appreciation for the consequences of making such serious allegations.

“The defendant’s comments about the plaintiff during the podcast constituted an attack calculated to destroy the plaintiff’s reputation in the Liberian community in Australia and cause the community to reject her,” Justice Tottle said.

“The community was mourning the loss of Ms Dweh and the imputations the plaintiff was complicit in the murder of Ms Dweh and coerced her husband to commit the murder could not have been more serious.”

Ms Gbangaye was ordered to pay $325,000 in general damages and a further $70,400 for economic loss incurred by Ms Jabbie.

When approached by the Herald Sun, Ms Gbangaye said she wasn’t happy with the judgement but was unable to make any further comment.

Ms Jabbie did not respond to requests for comment.

Originally published as Melbourne podcaster Susanna Gbangaye to pay $400k in damages over Janet Dweh murder episode