Child recovery agent at the centre of the 60 Minutes abduction scandal sued for defamation
The child recovery agent at the centre of the 60 Minutes abduction scandal in Lebanon has been sued for defamation after labelling an award-winning female author a “pedophile sympathiser”.
NSW
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A former Australian soldier and child recovery agent at the centre of the 60 Minutes abduction scandal in Lebanon has been sued for defamation after labelling an award-winning female author a “pedophile sympathiser”.
But in a dramatic twist, controversial child rescuer Adam Whittington has vowed Jasmin Newman, the woman who launched the legal action against him, will never see a cent of his money in damages.
Whittington, a dual British-Australian citizen, was thrust into the international spotlight in 2016 when he was detained alongside Brisbane mother Sally Faulkner and four 60 Minutes crew – reporter Tara Brown, senior producer Stephen Rice, sound recordist David Ballment and cameraman Ben Williamson – when their attempt to recover Faulkner’s children in a Lebanese street came unstuck.
The whole group was jailed on remand.
Channel 9 secured a deal worth $500,000 with the children’s father, Ali Elamine, to have Ms Faulkner and the 60 Minutes team released after almost two weeks in a Beirut prison.
Whittington and his team languished in jail for a further four months before Whittington was allowed to return to his home in Sweden.
The case made headlines around the world and sparked widespread ethical and legal debates, especially after Whittington gave an exclusive, tell-all interview to Channel 7’s Sunday Night program in which he alleged that Channel 9 paid his company more than $100,000 to facilitate the rescue, then left him to rot in prison when it went pear-shaped.
The book
Four years later, Newman, an award-winning accredited family dispute resolution mediator and respected co-parenting coach, published a book titled The Child Snatchers: The Complex Nature of Parent-Child Abductions, which included a chapter critiquing Whittington’s 2016 Lebanese operation.
According to documents tendered to the NSW Supreme Court, Whittington subsequently launched a very public campaign against Newman, claiming she had defamed him by publishing “garbage, lies, exaggeration [and] made up horse s**t”.
The court heard he used a blog on his personal website, a web page connected with his company ‘Child Abduction Recovery International’ and his public social media accounts to accuse her of being a pedophile sympathiser, a fraud, dishonest and a misogynist.
Within the posts, which were published between late 2019 and early 2021, Whittington alleged that Newman was in league with two men he claimed were pedophiles and that she had attacked women who had sought to protect their children from sexual abuse.
“Jasmin Newman, you are a disgraceful fraud, liar, and the most disgusting pedophile sympathisers (sic) in Australia,” Whittington wrote in a 114-page article on his website and referred to in court documents.
“It’s very clear and true you hate women who protect their sexually abused kids.”
The court heard Newman served Whittington with a preliminary legal letter in October 2020, then a formal statement of claim in early 2021, but neither prompted him to stop posting defamatory comments.
The cross claim
Whittington, who is now believed to be based in Russia, filed a defence and a cross claim in August 2021, in which he denied publishing the bulk of the offending material, saying most of the social media posts and website blogs were uploaded by one of his employees.
However, he also claimed he was justified in publishing the material because it was “substantially true”.
In his cross claim, Whittington accused Newman of defaming him in her Child Snatchers book.
“The book was written by the cross defendant [Newman] for the purpose of perpetrating a hate campaign against the cross claimant [Whittington] and others she and her gang despised for his role,” Whittington wrote.
He claimed Newman had defamed him in a series of comments she made on a Facebook page that implied he was a “reckless”, “amateur cowboy” who had “sold pipe dreams to desperate parents” and failed to undertake any due diligence, thereby “deliberately put[ting] lives at risk”.
He also alleged further comments made by Newman painted him as a criminal and a pedophile.
The promise
The court heard Whittington’s early attempts to challenge Newman’s statement of claim and have it thrown out of court were unsuccessful and by mid-2024 he had lost his legal representation.
In an email to Justice Stephen Rothman’s chambers and Newman’s lawyer in August 2024, Whittington begged for assistance in finding a pro-bono lawyer to help argue his case, while doubling down on his vile beliefs about Newman.
“I absolutely stand by my comments – Newman is a pedophile sympathiser and a fraud, associated to and communicates (sic) with numerous child sex offenders,” Whittington wrote in the email.
The court heard Whittington largely withdrew from the court process after that exchange, failing to serve any evidence in his case in line with the approved timeline and not logging in for court appearances.
Justice Rothman awarded default judgment to Newman in September 2024.
Court documents show Whittington’s poor attitude towards the case had only deteriorated further by the time talk of a costs hearing arose, culminating in him issuing a jaw-dropping vow.
“Dear Idiot and lawyer to Australia’s biggest pedophile sympathiser,” Whittington wrote to Mr Armitage in an email in December that was tendered to court as part of the law suit.
“Stop wasting my time opening rubbish and tagging me in your nonsense emails. In fact, to make sure you don’t waste another minute of my time, I’ll block you from this day on.
“Your scumbag client won’t get one cent. That I promise.”
The hearing
Jasmin Newman is thoroughly over this case.
Sitting in a spacious, modern courtroom on the seventh floor of Sydney’s Law Courts building with only her barrister by her side, Newman just wants to put this deeply troubling chapter of her life behind her.
She’s been plagued by insomnia, stress and anxiety since Whittington began targeting her, and she has had to engage the help of a psychologist to deal with the physical and mental fall out.
She also fears for her physical safety, so vicious are the comments online from some of Whittington’s more extreme followers.
“Is there any truth at all to any of the negative material about you in that document?” asks Justice Nicholas Chen, the judge assigned to oversee the costs hearing.
“Nothing whatsoever,” Newman replies.
When asked to detail the impact of Whittington’s words on her, Newman pauses for a moment, then says simply “it’s been quite devastating.”
She takes a moment then elaborates further.
“My concerns about damage to my otherwise very good reputation and just the prolific nature of it, so often that you start to become quite vigilant of following [Whittington’s posts] to see what’s now been posted or what’s been said next, and having to scan every publication to see if my name is mentioned in a derogatory manner,” she said.
“It’s been incredibly stressful. I have at times really struggled with my mental health over this, just the fears and doubts and second guessing everything about myself.
“It’s a really insidious form of torment of somebody, particularly the threats to never stop. That’s what’s been probably most disturbing about it.”
The court heard Newman has already spent nearly $170,000 on legal fees to fight Whittington in court.
She is asking the court to award her aggravated damages, saying Whittington’s combative conduct throughout the proceedings and his ongoing publication of defamatory material, even after being served with a legal letter and a lawsuit, warrants the higher payout.
Justice Chen is expected to deliver a judgment in the matter next month.
Originally published as Child recovery agent at the centre of the 60 Minutes abduction scandal sued for defamation
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