An "uncaring, brutal and irresponsible" father will not receive a cent in damages after losing most of his defamation case against 60 Minutes, a Sydney judge has ruled.
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Divorced couple Mouhammad and Pamela Tabbaa are facing a hefty legal bill after a jury accepted as true their daughter's 2014 interview about being kidnapped at 13 and held captive by her relatives in Syria for almost five years.
But the NSW Supreme Court jury in December also found that a Nine Network news item conveyed an untrue meaning that Mr Tabbaa forced Nadia Tabbaa to marry her cousin at 13 and sold her off to her cousin's family in Syria.
Justice Desmond Fagan on Thursday ruled the father wasn't entitled to any payout due to his already damaged reputation and his recovery of compensation from another media organisation for substantially publishing the same story.
The accepted circumstances "portray him as an uncaring, brutal and irresponsible parent who abandoned his child to others at all times", the judge said.
Nadia Tabbaa's time in Damascus was characterised by "denial of education, serfdom, religious indoctrination, physical and mental abuse and periodic exhibition as a marriage prospect through her mid-teens".
The jury accepted Ms Tabbaa's evidence detailing traumatic events including being forced to undergo a virginity test in Jordan and being subjected to violence and abuse from her father who threatened to slit her throat after she escaped back to Sydney when she was 18.
"Ms Tabbaa's evidence was impressive and consistently supported by the defendants' other witnesses," the judge said.
But her father's denials were "strained and implausible" and his chief supporting witness, Pamela Tabbaa, was "clearly untruthful".
The judge said the jury's failure to find that Mr Tabbaa forced his daughter to marry her second cousin was not inconsistent with her evidence that she took part in a form of marriage according to local custom.
No measurable compensable hurt to his feelings would flow from the false portrayals of his forcing her to marry at 13 and selling her off, as the other findings showed "a man completely lacking compassion or sense of responsibility for his daughter".
He was interested in her "only to the extent of fearing she might infringe his preoccupying concern with her chastity or that she might in some other respect disobey his wishes".
The parents are appealing against the jury's decisions.
Australian Associated Press
