‘I still have trouble sleeping': The impact of ‘relentless' online defamation
'Relentless'. That's how family law mediator Jasmin Newman describes Adam Whittington's online vendetta against her.
Whittington, a self-styled child recovery expert, was at the heart of a bungled 60 Minutes attempt to reunite two Australian children with their mother that led to the crew spending two weeks in a Beirut prison. He undertook a years-long online campaign that characterised Newman as variously sympathetic to paedophiles, a fraudster and misrepresenting her qualifications.
60 Minutes is broadcast by Nine, owner of this masthead.
'The harassment began in 2019, and as of the 13th February, he hasn't stopped,' she told the Herald, speaking for the first time after the NSW Supreme Court in March concluded Whittington must pay more than $300,000 in aggravated damages and costs for the six years of inflammatory posts that spanned Facebook, Twitter and WordPress.
Newman came to Whittington's attention when she wrote a book about international family-child abduction cases, including what she called 'the Lebanon debacle', drawing on her expertise in mediating family conflicts.
'The purpose was to bring attention to these kinds of matters and the complex nature of intercultural marriages and difficulties of different jurisdictions in parenting matters,' she said.
When Whittington learnt of the book, his response was swift and brutal.
'He called me a paedophile sympathiser, a fraudster, a scammer,' she said. None of these allegations are true.
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