Months after Tara Brown and the 60 Minutes crew were released from a Lebanese jail, the details of the botched child abduction operation that landed ’em there are still boggling.
Regardless of right or wrong, Channel 9 stood behind Brown and her team through the ordeal. However, Child Abduction Recovery International (CARI)’s founder Adam Whittington is now suggesting the channel only stood by its employees – leaving Whittington and his crew to languish behind bars.
Speaking to Channel 7’s Sunday Night, Whittington implied the 60 Minutes team were given preferential treatment following a US $500K payment made to the children’s father by Channel 9.
At the time, Ali al-Amin claimed he didn’t receive any cash to drop the charges. That turned out to be false, and Whittington claims “as soon as they pulled out their chequebook, everything just went downhill for everybody. Obviously not Channel 9’s crew”
Brown and the children’s mother Sally Faulkner, along with producer Stephen Rice and production staff David Ballment and Ben Wilkinson, were released after a couple of weeks. That’s a far sight shorter than the nearly four months Whittington served in Lebanese lock-up.
He also claims the Channel 9 team were given pizza and coffee while behind bars, compared to the maggot-infested water Whittington and his crew were subjected to. He also described another prison he was transferred to as “one of those places you just don’t want to remember,” before getting choked up describing it.
Regarding Stephen Rice, who was sacked by Channel 9 in the aftermath, Whittington said he was a “scapegoat” and they “threw him under the bus, just like they did to us.”
In fact, Whittington’s team took such a low view of Channel 9’s treatment of Rice that they used the written report of his dismissal as toilet paper while locked up. “I received a copy of it in prison,” he said.
“It was passed around and used as toilet paper, that’s what we did with it.”
Rough stuff. You can watch the full interview right here.
Source and photo: Sunday Night.
