60 Minutes Reporter And Crew Detained in Lebanon.

[the_great_she_elephant]

http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/60-minutes-reporter-tara-brown-film-crew-detained-i...

I hope DFAT manage to get them released, but, reading the article, it is hard to feel much sympathy for them.  I hope they are as frightened and bewildered as those poor children must have been

Regardless of the rights and wrongs of the father refusing to bring them home,  there is no evidence these children were being abused or neglected, yet suddenly, they are swooped on at a busstop by four strange men physiclly snatched from their grandmother's side, bundled into a car and  and spirited away to a secret destination. Imagine the sheer terror that  must have caused  them. And all this is being  filmed - not to mention abetted - by a TV crew whose only motive is to provide  sensationalist entertainment for TV viewers  and  boost  ratings and advertising revenue for the TV channel. 

[tasfleur]

I understand what you are saying about this, but if I was that mother whose children had been taken to such a country for a 'holiday' and never brought back, there is nothing I would not do to have them returned to me if they had been taken under such false pretences.

If the truth is they have been abducted by the father , then that is a serious and appalling situation that has to be remedied as quickly as possible.

I've no idea why the Sixty Minutes people were involved and they probably shouldn't have been, so I agree with you totally there. 

[azureline**]

I can't understand a mother agreeing to send children that age to Lebanon without her.

That aside, the 60 min crew should have kept out of it, they have now risked the arrest of the mother.

[tasfleur]

Perhaps the mother agreed because the father promised faithfully to bring the children back, and said he just wanted them to visit his family (their grandparents etc).  Some women are simply too trusting.

Shades of "Not Without My Daughter".  The mother went with the husband and child in that case though, however, he would still not allow the child to leave, but she could leave on her own, thankfully it was a happy ending and they both got out of Iran.  In some countries, the father has 'ownership' of the children outright as their law, usually religious.

It's going to be a waiting game for all concerned in this case.

[the_great_she_elephant]

Tas, it's not the mother's actions I'm so angry about.I n her place I might well have done the same thing.  It's the fact that 60 minutes were tagging along behind her, filming the whole thing for the sake of a sensational 'story'. All their presence did was add to the risk of failure. To think of what must have been an nighmarish trauma for those children being served up as entertainment on our TV screens is just sickening.

[***super_nova***]

Maybe the mother needed the money to pay the rescue agents?  I cannot imagine what other reason you would take a 60minutes film crew on such a sensitive operation.  Hope she gets away OK. 

[tasfleur]

I totally agree with you about that, I too think they were interfering and taking advantage of what was going on.  I am not sympathetic towards that TV crew, they should not have been there.

Hopefully, it will be resolved with a happy ending.

[Anonymous]

Members of the child recovery agency have apparently also been detained.

maybe the mother wanted the 

story to be told to create awareness.

Mr Elamine, who Ms Faulkner met and fell in love with while she was working as a flight attendant, told her their two kids “aren’t coming home to Australia, ever.”

Ms Faulkner and her children have reportedly gone into hiding until they can get out of Lebanon and back to Brisbane.

The young mother had previously appealed to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade to help her retrieve the children and tackle the complex Lebanese court system. But Ms Faulkner said because parental child abduction is not criminalised in Australia, the government had shown no interest in assisting her or her family.

“It’s not just about me and my children, there are hundreds and hundreds of families that this has happened to,” she added. “They can’t really do anything. Some people spend over $100,000 that could have been spent on the children.”

[the_great_she_elephant]

Did 'telling the story' have to include  filming her children getting snatched off the street by four professional 'kidnappers'?

[Anonymous]

All their presence did was add to the risk of failure.

how?

Did 'telling the story' have to include  filming her children getting snatched off the street by four professional 'kidnappers'?

i didn't realise the child recovery agency

were 'professional kidnappers'.  

child recovery australia assists the AFP

in recovering kidnapped children.  they also

work with the hague convention.

i don't know if the story had to include

the whole operation.  they obviously 

wanted it to be recorded.

lebanese tv station released a footage

of the retrieval, who knows who else

was filming it.