{"id":136371,"date":"2025-09-11T23:45:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-11T23:45:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/136371\/"},"modified":"2025-09-11T23:45:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-11T23:45:08","slug":"sally-faulkner-reunited-with-children-almost-10-years-after-botched-child-retrieval-with-60-minutes-in-lebanon-sally-faulkner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/136371\/","title":{"rendered":"Sally Faulkner reunited with children almost 10 years after botched \u2018child retrieval\u2019 with 60 Minutes in Lebanon | Sally Faulkner"},"content":{"rendered":"

An Australian mother who was detained in Lebanon<\/a> along with 60 Minutes presenter Tara Brown and a Channel Nine crew after a botched \u201cchild retrieval\u201d in 2016 has had her children returned to her after winning temporary custody in a US court.<\/p>\n

Sally Faulkner returned to Queensland in January this year with her daughter and son nearly a decade after she last saw the children in person, the Guardian can reveal.<\/p>\n

She won custody from her former partner, Ali Elamine, after he and the children fled Lebanon for the US state of Georgia during last year\u2019s war between Israel and Hezbollah, US court documents released to the Guardian show.<\/p>\n

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Faulkner flew to Georgia to see the children last November, arranging with Elamine to meet them a few days after they arrived in the US. According to documents filed by Elamine, he and Faulkner had recently signed a \u201cconsent agreement\u201d that purported to nullify previous legal rulings in their long-running dispute over the children and granted full custody to Elamine.<\/p>\n

But unbeknown to her ex husband, Faulkner had days earlier filed a temporary protection order in Georgia accusing Elamine of family violence during their marriage a decade ago. Elamine was served with the order by sheriff\u2019s deputies when he arrived at the meeting, and Faulkner left with the children.<\/p>\n

Journalist Tara Brown, left, and Sally Faulkner after they were released from a Lebanese jail with the three 60 Minutes crew members, in Baabda, east of Beirut, Lebanon, in April 2016. Photograph: Hussein Malla\/AP<\/p>\n

Faulkner alleged in her application for the protection order that during their relationship Elamine had once locked her in a bedroom, thrown glasses and other objects in her direction, and that he had kidnapped the children in 2015 and refused to return them to her custody.<\/p>\n

Elamine, in subsequent filings, described the allegations as false and said the protection order was \u201cimproperly obtained\u201d. A judge dismissed the order in December, ruling it was unnecessary as the couple lived on different continents and citing a lack of evidence for the family violence allegations.<\/p>\n

Faulkner was then granted temporary custody in a hearing on 14 January in order to participate in a \u201cfamily reunification program\u201d with the children \u2013 the youngest of whom had no memory of living with his mother, according to the court documents.<\/p>\n

The reunification program, called Family Bridges, was recommended by a guardian ad litem, an independent court-appointed advocate for the minors\u2019 best interests. Elamine\u2019s lawyers argued in opposition to the order that programs in the style of Family Bridges \u2013 under which Elamine was not allowed to contact the children \u2013 had been banned in some states across the US.<\/p>\n

Faulkner and her lawyer have acknowledged that her proceedings in the US court are mostly funded by the Australian government, according to transcripts from the Georgia court, which also show that officials from the Australian embassy in Washington DC have been present at some hearings.<\/p>\n

A Georgia judge presiding in a status hearing on the matter on 19 August called it \u201cthe most screwed up case I\u2019ve ever had in my entire 45 years of being a lawyer and a judge\u201d and \u201cthe most bizarre case I\u2019ve ever seen in my life\u201d, according to a US court transcript.<\/p>\n

The custody dispute between Faulkner and Elamine, a Lebanese and US national, made global headlines in 2016 when Faulkner and Channel Nine\u2019s 60 Minutes engaged a team of self-styled \u201cchild recovery agents\u201d to abduct the two children from a Beirut street and document the operation for a segment of the news program.<\/p>\n

The agents snatched the children while they were out walking with Elamine\u2019s mother, who he alleges in the court documents was knocked to the ground and suffered a brain bleed. Faulkner managed to spend time in a safe house with the children before Lebanese police arrested her, Brown, the TV crew and the child-recovery team.<\/p>\n

Ali Elamine talking to the press as he leaves the court in Baabda northeast of Beirut on 20 April 2016. Photograph: Anwar Amro\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

It later emerged that Elamine, who had separated from Faulkner the previous year, had been tracking the plot using his daughter\u2019s iPad, which was still connected to the email account Faulkner was using to coordinate the operation.<\/p>\n

Faulkner said the incident was a desperate attempt to regain access to her children, who were taken to Lebanon the previous year by Elamine for a holiday and then kept there against her wishes.<\/p>\n

Faulkner was released from the Lebanese jail only after signing an agreement giving up her claims to custody of the children. An affidavit from a Lebanese lawyer, filed by Faulkner\u2019s lawyers in the US case, claimed she had signed the agreement while handcuffed and without receiving an English translation.<\/p>\n

A war in Lebanon, a flight to Georgia<\/p>\n

Until November, Faulkner had only had occasional video and telephone contact with her children in the near-decade since the 60 Minutes incident, according to documents filed in the US court. During that time she continued to pursue legal avenues against Elamine.<\/p>\n

She told the court in her petition for a temporary protection order in November that in 2017 she learned Elamine was considering travelling to California for a surf contest. She lodged a temporary protection order against him in the state along with a travel ban on the children \u2013 but Elamine never made the trip.<\/p>\n

In September last year, the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah escalated into a full-blown war and the southern Lebanese town where Elamine ran a surf school was repeatedly bombed. According to the documents, Faulkner learned of Elamine\u2019s plans to relocate to the US for the children\u2019s safety, and she agreed to sign off on emergency US passports to allow the children to travel.<\/p>\n

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Before making the trip, Elamine asked Faulkner to sign the \u201cconsent agreement\u201d recognising his sole custody of the children.<\/p>\n

Faulkner\u2019s lawyers later told the US court that she signed that document \u201cunder extraordinary coercion and duress \u2026 solely to incentivise [Elamine] to both remove the children from a war-torn, dangerous environment in Lebanon and in a desperate attempt to induce [the] father to bring the children to a jurisdiction which could provide an avenue for [Faulkner] to finally recover the children\u201d.<\/p>\n

When she confirmed that Elamine had landed in Georgia with the children, Faulkner lodged the temporary protection order in the state.<\/p>\n

On 19 November last year, Elamine was served with the order after arriving to meet Faulkner and was separated from the children. The children were \u201cscreaming and [doing] everything they could to try to stop it from happening\u201d, he alleged in a submission. Another document, filed by Faulkner\u2019s lawyers in February, claimed that the police were later called to her temporary residence, either by Elamine or one of the children seeking to be returned to their father.<\/p>\n

At the hearing on 14 January after hearing evidence from both parties and the guardian ad litem, the judge ordered that Faulkner be granted temporary custody so she and the children could participate in the Family Bridges program to repair their \u201cseverely alienated\u201d relationship.<\/p>\n

Opposing the order, Elamine\u2019s lawyers said the program was based on a controversial and \u201cnot scientifically proven\u201d method that involved isolating the children from Elamine in order to help them re-establish their bond with their mother.<\/p>\n

His lawyers argued in their challenge to the temporary custody order that this kind of program had been banned in many US states and pointed to a UN Human Rights Council report<\/a> and a story from the investigative outlet ProPublica<\/a> raising doubts about the efficacy and safety of such programs.<\/p>\n

Faulkner\u2019s lawyers have said in response there was no evidence that attending the program \u201chad caused the children any harm or trauma whatsoever\u201d.<\/p>\n

They argued in submissions that Elamine had \u201cwrongfully and purposefully excised [their] mother from the children\u2019s lives, never gave the children an opportunity to have a relationship with [their] mother, and caused the children to become entirely dependent on [their] father as the only parent they ever knew\u201d.<\/p>\n

They added: \u201cIt is not in the children\u2019s best interests to let [their] father continue with his campaign of alienation and estrangement toward [their] mother. Again, it is not in the children\u2019s interest to reward [the] father for the effectiveness of his wrongful actions\u201d.<\/p>\n

In late August, the US court ordered Elamine be permitted a 30-minute call with his children and that the Family Bridges program be ended. The case continues in Georgia.<\/p>\n

A lawyer for Elamine declined to comment. Lawyers for Faulkner in Australia and the US did not respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An Australian mother who was detained in Lebanon along with 60 Minutes presenter Tara Brown and a Channel…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":136372,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-136371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=136371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136371\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/136372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}