Sally Faulkner opens her heart: her most incredible interview yet
Sally Faulkner put everything on the line to recover her children after her estranged husband Ali Elamine took them to Lebanon. An ill-fated abduction attempt left her emotionally shattered and facing 20 years in a Lebanese jail and yet, she tells Michael
They were the words that Sally Faulkner had secretly feared, yet had somehow convinced herself that she would never hear. Via a Skype internet link with her estranged husband Ali Elamine in Lebanon, Sally felt a bitter chill run through her body as Ali’s flat, emotionless voice revealed that her children, Lahela, then four, and Noah, two, were not coming home.
“Up to that point, it was the most distressing moment of my life,” recalls Sally, 31. “To see him on the other end of that line, halfway across the world, so cold and emotionless. He said, ‘The plans have changed; the kids aren’t coming back.’ I was angry. I was scared. I wanted to throw up. It was all rushing through my mind; the children, their future, how this would affect them, how messed up this would make them, how they’d perceive relationships – my mind was just racing. I said, ‘My God, you can’t do this, the poor kids!’”
Sally’s reaction was one almost any mother might have had in the same situation. She was distraught and
understandably fearful for her children’s uncertain future without her contact, care and “unconditional love”.
Yet what Sally didn’t realise at that moment was that she was on the brink of one of the strangest and most controversial custody battles that Australia has ever witnessed. Out of that chilling exchange in 2015 sprang months of personal torment for her that ended, in April this year, in a failed abduction attempt on the streets of Beirut, as three men from a private child-recovery team tried to snatch her children from the hands of their father’s mother. Even more sensationally, the attempt was being filmed by a crew from the Nine Network’s current affairs flagship, 60 Minutes. Within just a few short hours, Sally, the recovery team, the TV crew and reporter Tara Brown would all be languishing in a Lebanese jail.
That, in turn, exposed Sally’s fractured relationship with her former partner, Ali, in all its complicated imperfections. While still behind bars awaiting a trial – with the unnerving prospect of 20 years in a foreign jail – Sally was already being judged in the court of Australian public opinion, tried before a population eager for every alleged salacious detail.
Denied all access
Up until now, Sally has kept a dignified silence about a very undignified experience, but she isn’t prepared to be silent any more. She wants Australia to know what really happened in Lebanon; wants people to know the truth about the man she once loved and the events that led to such a desperate, despairing attempt to reunite with her children.
Sally also wants her children to know the truth. She has had no contact with Lahela or Noah in the months since her release – shut out, she says, from Ali’s social media accounts and denied all access to them by telephone.
“To be separated from your children, to know that they are half a world away from you and not know what is happening to them, what they are feeling, is agony, the most intolerable agony that a mother can endure,” she says. “All I ask is that people don’t judge me until they have walked in my shoes. You cannot know what it is like until you have lived through it, to be living through it. It’s like having your heart ripped from your chest. And you can’t know what you are prepared to do until you are in that situation.”
Many in the media fell over themselves in an attempt to be the first to tell Ali’s side of the story, pushing the line that he was the aggrieved party, with lurid suggestions the marriage had broken down because of Sally’s so-called infidelity with another man by whom she has had another child.
In a candid, emotional and sometimes distressing interview, Sally reveals exclusive details about the inside story of her relationship with Ali Elamine, the events that drove her to go along with the recovery attempt, how, in the hours that followed the abduction, while she and her children waited in a Beirut safe house, she discovered that her son Noah had been circumcised without her knowledge or consent and, she says, how her children longed to be reunited with her. For Sally, her children’s wishes were reason enough to go along with the recovery attempt. Desperate and running out of time, Sally believed she had been deceived by her former partner and therefore would do whatever she needed to to get her children back home.
“Would I do it again?” she asks. “Yes. Absolutely. I would do it again. With the greatest respect to Lebanon and its legal system, with the greatest respect to
Ali and his family, I would do it again if it meant that I could have my children back with me. Any mother would do the same, I believe.”
Sally met Ali in 2009 at a house party in Dubai, part of the United Arab Emirates. She was then an air hostess for Emirates airlines and
Ali was the friend of a friend.
“He seemed to be interested in me, but to be honest I wasn’t that interested in him,” recalls Sally, saying he was “a drunk surfer goofball”. Yet he asked her friends for her phone number and asked her out. “We went out to dinner, but I still wasn’t that into him. It took a while and he was very persistent. But, eventually, I started to see how charming he could be and I started to fall for him. He was very charming. And when I fell, I fell heavily.”
She also became pregnant. They had been dating for a year and Sally was due to come home to Australia. Two weeks before departing, she discovered she was pregnant with Lahela.
“By then, I wanted to be a mum, but Ali had a different mindset,” says Sally. “It was probably just as well that I was leaving because it’s illegal to be pregnant and unmarried there. He was adamant that I need not continue
with the pregnancy, but I knew, even as I got on the plane, that I wanted to keep the baby.” Months later, though, Ali had a change of heart. He came to Australia to seek out Sally, and swept her off her feet. “I hadn’t seen him in seven months, but suddenly, he was in my kitchen proposing to me,” she says. “He turned on all the charm and I thought, ‘He’s showing me that affection and love, and that would be a given in terms of his own child, so I’ll give him the chance that he wants.’ ”
Lahela was born on October 4, 2010. Sally and Ali married on the 14th and held their wedding reception two days later in the backyard of Sally’s parents’ home. They had planned to live in Australia, but shortly after the wedding, Ali announced that he had a job with his brother in Lebanon.
“It wasn’t ideal, but I thought, ‘I’ll be with him. I’ll have my baby. It will just be us. What more could I want?’” recalls Sally.
Yet the life that she found in Beirut was far different from the life she knew in Brisbane. She was isolated and often alone. Ali was at work or simply “out”, not coming home until late.
“He changed,” she says. “Instead of being there with me and Lahela, he suddenly decided it wasn’t culturally acceptable to do that anymore. He wasn’t doing the daddy thing, he wasn’t going to be there for dinner, he wasn’t going to help bath his child.”
Sally also had a fractious relationship with Ali’s mother, a domineering matriarch who scrutinised her new daughter-in-law with a critical eye and left her even more uncertain of her place in this new world.
Her relationship with Ali began to fall apart. He ordered her to stop wearing a Christian jewellery cross that he’d bought for her because “his family wouldn’t understand what was going on”. If she disagreed with him, he’d shut down and ignore her. Once, he locked her out of their flat, slamming the door in her face and leaving her on the fire escape for hours. With every passing day, Ali withdrew from
Sally. If she wanted to talk after an argument, he’d refuse. More than that, Ali made her feel it was her fault. “That was his trick, turning it around so that I felt I had to work harder for his love, that I wasn’t good enough,” she says. “He was demonstrating that he needed to be in control.”
It all came to a head after a row with Ali at his parents’ house in a village two hours from Beirut. He told her to get in their car, saying, “give Lahela to Mum, she wants a cuddle”. Sally handed her daughter over. “Ali told me to get in the car, we were leaving,” says Sally. “But I wasn’t leaving Lahela. He said, ‘Get in’, and forced me into the car. Then we drove away.”
Forced to get on a plane
Back in their Beirut apartment, Ali ripped the internet connection from the wall and left her alone for two weeks and unable to communicate with her family in Australia. When he returned, Ali threw Sally’s passport at her, telling her he wanted a divorce and that she was going back to Australia. No explanations; no attempts at reconciliation. Sally was devastated not just because her husband was sending her away, but because she was being forced to leave Lahela behind. He put Sally on a plane the next day.
By now, Sally had come to realise Ali’s behaviour was irrational. “I was
I had to work harder for his love.
looking at my friends’ marriages and thinking, ‘This is just not normal. They don’t have to work for their partner’s love. They’re not having a relationship switch turned on and off, or asking themselves, am I loved this week?’ It’s crazy to think about it. Why would I stay with someone who made me feel that horrible? But he had this way of luring me back, to the point where I was so high on hope and high on the way he was able to be so charismatic and charming that I would always backpedal and push away the negative thoughts.”
Some part of Sally still loved Ali, despite his strange behaviour. And for his part, Ali wasn’t giving up either. He pursued Sally to Australia three months later, bringing Lahela with him. He pleaded for another chance. He won Sally over and, dazzled by his promises, she returned to Lebanon. Yet everything was changing – and rapidly. In quick succession, she became pregnant and gave birth to Noah at a time when violence in Lebanon was escalating. And despite Ali’s promises, the gap between them only widened. Finally, a car bomb not far from their apartment sent Sally into a spin. “I couldn’t live like that,” she says. “What if the children were injured? It wasn’t safe and I told Ali I was taking the kids and going home to Australia.” He agreed.
From there, in late 2013, the relationship slid inexorably to ruin. Within a month, Sally says, Ali asked for a divorce for a second time. By then, back home in Brisbane, Sally was convinced the marriage was over. For more than a year, she and Ali lived separate lives, though Sally freely gave him access to communicate with the children via the internet. At the same time, they came to a co-parenting agreement under which Sally would allow an annual holiday for the children in Lebanon with their father.
Meanwhile, she met a circle of old friends, including a handsome blond man she’d known at school – Brendan Pierce. It was a platonic friendship at first. “He was a shoulder I could lean on, someone who listened and understood what I had been through,” explains Sally. “I was less anxious and more sure that Ali and I had done the right thing in separating. I wanted everyone to be happy.”
Yet that wasn’t to be. She and Brendan became a couple. “What I realise now is that this was a crisis point for Ali,” says Sally. “He came to visit the kids one Christmas, 2014. He knew about Brendan. He even borrowed our car. But he refused to come inside and meet Brendan.
“At every point, we were discussing access and custody agreements. It seemed amiable when he went back to Lebanon. It was very clear that our relationship was over.”
She had no idea what was about the happen. On his next visit to Australia a few months later, Ali asked if he could take the children back to Lebanon for a two-week holiday. “We had agreed to a yearly visit, but this was out of the blue,” she recalls. “But we’d been getting on well. He’d been respectful. There were no problems, so how could I say no? He was great with the kids and they enjoyed being with him. In the end, I trusted him. Before he left with them, I made him promise that it would only be for a twoweek visit. Lahela didn’t want to go. I had to promise it would only be a short visit. He promised, too, not just me but the children, too.”
At the airport, Ali and the children were stopped by officials, who called Sally to check if it was okay for the children to leave the country. “I told them it was okay, that we had an agreement,” she says. “I will always regret that.”
Lies and broken trust
Ten months later, when Sally found herself in the back of a car in Beirut, that decision came back to haunt her. Backed by a media organisation’s money and experience, she was in the company of child-recovery experts and about to snatch back her children. “I felt it was my only hope,” she explains. “I couldn’t stand by and let him get away with what he’d done. It wasn’t that he’d lied to me. It was that he had promised the kids and lied to them. In my last conversation with Lahela, she wanted to come home.”
The plan was simple: grab the children, slip them into a car and make for a safe house somewhere in Beirut. If all went well, they’d be out of the country in less than 24 hours.
Yet it didn’t go well. As we all know now, Lebanese police launched a city-wide search within minutes of the children’s abduction. Sally could hear the sirens from inside their safe house.
“Lahela and Noah were frightened at first,” she says. “I kept saying, ‘It’s me, it’s Mummy’, and when they joined me in the car, they were relieved and that made it all worth it. I regret having to scare them, but I felt I simply didn’t have any choice. I guess I’ll
I told them it was okay. I’ll always regret that.”
have to live with that. I believed, and still believe, it was a small price for their future happiness.”
At their hiding place, following instructions, Sally called Ali to let him know the children were safe. It was a brief exchange. “He was cold, almost emotionless,” says Sally. Tara Brown and the crew stayed with them into the early evening, but later, they left and Sally was alone with her son and daughter. To pass the time, Sally did something she hadn’t been able to do for such a long time – she played with them and read them books.
Then, while taking Noah to the toilet, she realised he had been circumcised during his time in Ali’s care. “That was a complete shock,” Sally says.
“It was all I could do not to cry. How could Ali do that without letting me know, without discussing it? It was just another reason to detest the man who’d taken our children.”
Police discovered them in the safe house the next day. Sally was taken to jail and separated from Lahela and Noah. She was put into a cell with Tara and several other women prisoners. Internationally, all hell was breaking loose. After spending almost two weeks in prison, Sally and the 60 Minutes team were released when Ali agreed to drop personal charges of kidnap against them in return for a significant payout – reportedly up to $500,000 – from the Nine Network. Sally also agreed to give up custody of her children in order to obtain her freedom, a situation that has left her grief-stricken.
Just before she left Lebanon, the judge in charge of her case ordered
Ali to allow Sally one hour of access to Lahela and Noah. “Lahela gave me her ring and made me promise that I would never forget her,” says Sally. “That’s the last time I spoke to them.”
Today, Sally remains distraught. Her tears are never far from the surface, but she is clearly a strong woman. She has to be because she and Brendan also have a child, Eli, born before the recovery attempt earlier this year.
“He’s the only reason I am still going,” says Sally, dabbing at the tears streaming down her cheeks. “That and the hope I will see Lahela and Noah again. Eli’s the reason
I get up in the morning. Depression is a very easy thing to slip into when you are in a situation that seems so hopeless. Right now, I have no contact with my children in Lebanon. I don’t have any prospect of seeing them. I don’t know if that will ever happen. I love kids. I love Eli and having Eli there, day in, day out, relying on me, reminds me that my other two children are relying on me, too, even though they are far away.”
How much does she want her children back? “I’d give my right arm if I had to – both my arms,” she says. Yet she knows that’s not likely, at least not in the short term.
“The reality is that they may not seek me out until they are older, but I do want them to know what really happened, that I didn’t simply let them go without doing whatever I could. Ali continues to make decisions in terms of alienating the children from me, but I know that in the long run the children will see the bigger picture. They’ll understand what actually happened.
“I need to rise above my own emotions and feelings, and think of my children because, ultimately, they love their dad, but they also love me. I think he is a broken human being using the children to get back at me. I think he feels he needs to use the children as a weapon against me to make me hurt as much as he is hurting.
“Ultimately, I know that I am a good person. Everyone who knows me knows that I am. I haven’t done a single bad thing to those children. The only thing I’ve ever done is love them with every single fibre of my being.” The only thing I’ve ever done is love them.