A major news organisation has shown an extraordinary lapse in judgment by exploiting a mother’s pain and taking part in a serious crime, writes Ruby Hamad.
You can’t fault a mother for trying. When Sally Faulkner learned that her Lebanese ex-husband, Ali Elamine, had no intention of returning their two children to Australia from Lebanon, where he had ostensibly taken them for a holiday, she would have known her chances of getting them back legally were almost nil. Parental rights are automatically given to fathers in Lebanon and the country is not a signatory to the Hague Convention which stipulates that children be returned to their “country of habitual residence”.
And so Faulkner turned to the media, with disastrous consequences. Now, along with four 60 Minutes journalists including presenter Tara Brown, she is in custody in Beirut following an audacious attempt to snatch the two children from a Beirut street. Two of the agents working for CARI, the “child recovery” organisation behind the bungled operation (run by Australian ex-soldier Adam Whittington), are also in custody.
The actions of a desperate mother are one thing; the extraordinary lapse in judgment and ethics of a crew of seasoned journalists getting involved in an international kidnapping scheme is another entirely.
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