Sydney father loses defamation case against 60 Minutes
A Sydney father will not receive a cent in damages after losing most of his defamation case against 60 Minutes over his daughter's account of being kidnapped at 13 and held captive by her relatives in Syria for almost five years.
The evidence brought by Mouhammad Tabbaa and his divorced wife showed "a man completely lacking in compassion or sense of responsibility for his daughter", said Justice Desmond Fagan in his NSW Supreme Court decision on Thursday.
After a jury in December accepted most of the TV program's defence of truth, the judge said the matters found to be untrue did not warrant any payout due to his already damaged reputation and his recovery of compensation from another media organisation.
Mr Tabbaa and his former wife Pamela Tabbaa, who are appealing the jury's decisions, now face a massive bill for the Nine Network's legal costs.
Nadia, now 29, said she was kidnapped while holidaying in Egypt, made to undergo a virginity test at a Jordan hospital and ill-treated by her grandmother in Syria before managing to return to Australia when she turned 18.
60 Minutes reported in 2014 that Nadia Tabbaa's parents conspired to move her against her will from Australia to Syria, where she was beaten and forced to marry a man she had never met.
Nadia, who was given the pseudonym Rania Farrah, told the program she had been tricked into travelling to Egypt for what she thought was a holiday when she was 13 years old, only for her to be made to live with her paternal relations in Syria for the next five years.
She was interrogated about whether she had taken drugs or had sex while living in Australia, subjected to a virginity check and physically assaulted by her father, she said.
"He's the most evil man I've ever met or anyone would ever meet," she said.
The program, presented by Liz Hayes and titled "Forced Marriage", featured re-enactments of a teenage Nadia creeping down the stairs with her shoes in her hand on the day she allegedly escaped with consular assistance.
"Nadia couldn't bear the idea of her future and, with the help of her neighbour, plotted her daring escape," Hayes reported.
When the Nine Network called Nadia Tabbaa as a witness in the trial, she broke down in tears while describing how she was forced to take a virginity test at a Jordan hospital as a teenager.
Nadia Tabbaa testified that despite telling the doctor she had not been with a man, the test purported to find she was not a virgin, leading to her being beaten by her father and brother Omar.
When she asked her brother to repeat her denial to their father, she said he replied: "He believes you because if he didn't you'd be dead".
Ms Tabbaa said while living in Sydney from age 8 to 13, her brother Omar regularly beat her with a belt, a kettle cord and thongs and was extremely abusive about the way she dressed.
He also abused her for going on sleepovers "in a house with strange men" and disapproved of her wearing swimming suits or leotards.
"Everything to him was sexualised," she said.
"Everything was very focused on chastity."
Ms Tabbaa said during her holiday in Egypt, she was told she would be taken to Jordan to see her father who had been living abroad and who she had not seen for a long time.
She was excited at seeing him because "as a little girl I did love my father".
But soon after her arrival, her father and Omar took her to a secluded paddock and interrogated her about her Sydney behaviour, asking about drugs, sleeping with men, running away from home and smoking.
They later told her "we have been planning this for months".
"They wanted me to be embarrassed as I had fallen for their trick" but she said she responded by saying she didn't care.
"My father spat on me," she said.
She had to live with her grandmother who "just hated me" and made her do all the household chores.
The grandmother regularly abused her saying: "You are lazy, you are spoiled, you are a donkey".
When an uncle dangled her over a balcony, her grandmother said: "he'll do it (drop her) and when they do the autopsy they will see you are not a virgin so he won't be arrested or go to jail".
AAP, Fairfax Media