Her desperate bid to retrieve her children saw her thrown into a Lebanese jail with a 60 Minutes crew. A decade later, Sally Faulkner is now living a quiet life in semi-rural Queensland with her partner and their young family.
The 50-year-old, who made international headlines when she was locked up with Nine reporter Tara Brown after a botched child-abduction operation on the streets of Beirut, was pictured by the Daily Mail earlier this month with her sons Eli, ten, and Izac, seven, and five-year-old daughter Lylah.
Faulkner and her three children with partner Brendan Pierce left their home outside Brisbane carrying belongings and a box of goods destined for nearby op shops.
Their beautiful house is worlds apart from Beirut's notoriously overcrowded Baabda Women's Prison, where the former air hostess was detained with Brown for two weeks back in 2016.
When the 2016 kidnapping of her two older children with Lebanese-American surfing entrepreneur Ali Elamine failed to translate into an international getaway, Faulkner faced up to 20 years' jail on alleged kidnapping charges.
In handcuffs, Faulkner had little choice but to sign a deal behind bars securing her release from jail in exchange for relinquishing all rights of custody over her eldest children, who were returned to Elamine.
Faulkner returned to Australia and started a second family with Pierce, but she never stopped fighting to regain access to her older children - and many Australians remained unwavering in their support for her.
Faulkner and Pierce, who run a successful cleaning business together, built their home in 2023.
Sally Faulkner, now aged 50, has built a new life with her second family in a beautiful house in semi-rural Queensland with her partner and their young children
Faulkner was jailed for two weeks in 2016 after the botched kidnap attempt in Beirut, which was controversially filmed by a Channel Nine crew
Faulkner vowed never to give up on winning custody of her children. Above: Faulkner holding an image of them when they were young in a photo featured in media coverage of her story
In January last year, Faulkner and her eldest children, both now teenagers, were reported by multiple news outlets to have reunited in Queensland.
The reunion came after the children had travelled with their father Elamine to the United States from Lebanon amid unrest in the Middle East.
The Daily Mail did not see the older children when we approached Faulkner at her property on May 15. Her lawyers were contacted for comment.
Faulkner's new home sits on former farmland in an area popular with young families.
After the Beirut incident - a major diplomatic and legal ordeal that led to her detention - Faulkner's freedom came at a steep cost: she would not see her children in person for nearly nine years.
During that period, Faulkner stayed in touch with her eldest two through occasional phone calls and rare video messages.
Before eventually seeing them again, she had lamented, 'We've missed out on so much time together.'
Meanwhile, Faulkner had begun a new family with Pierce. Their eldest was only four months old when Faulkner was arrested; he is now ten, with two younger siblings.
The 60 Minutes-organised kidnapping on a Beirut street in 2016 had devastating consequences for Faulkner's future with her eldest children
TV star Tara Brown, arrested after the failed 60 Minutes abduction, spent two weeks in Beirut's notorious Baabda Women's Prison before Channel Nine secured their release
TIMELINE OF A FAILED RELATIONSHIP
The dramatic events of April 2016 stemmed from the troubled history of a relationship that began in 2008, when Faulkner, then an Emirates Airlines flight attendant, met Ali Zied Elamine in Dubai.
2010: Faulkner planned to leave Dubai, but discovered she was pregnant by Elamine, who reportedly did not want the baby. However, when she was six months pregnant, he arrived in Australia and proposed.
October 2010: Their daughter is born in Brisbane. Ten days later, the pair married.
2011: The family of three moved to Beirut where Elamine begins working with his brother, and his parents meet their granddaughter.
But there is a falling-out, and Faulkner returns home. Three months later, Elamine arrives with their daughter and the couple reunite.
2012: Faulkner returns to Lebanon early in the year and becomes pregnant again, travelling home to Australia for her son to be born in November.
2013: The family return to Lebanon, but on August 15, 2013, a car bombing by terrorist group Hezbollah near their apartment kills 27 people and injures 200, prompting Faulkner to take her children back home.
Soon after, the couple agree to separate.
Elamine and Faulkner with their daughter and newborn son in November 2012
2014: The agreement was that the children lived with their mother in Australia, but would visit Lebanon. Elamine would visit Brisbane several times a year to see them.
May 2015: While the children are with their father in Lebanon, Elamine informs Faulkner they are not coming home.
Sally discovers she is pregnant to her new partner, Pierce.
As she awaits the birth, Faulkner begins looking around for child retrieval agents, eventually settling on former soldier Adam Whittington and his Child Abduction Recovery International (CARI) outfit.
Channel Nine's 60 Minutes becomes involved and, by December 2015, Whittington's Lebanese associate is investigating the possibility of abducting the children in broad daylight and escaping the country by boat to Cyprus.
In January 2016, Faulkner gives birth to her son, Eli.
COUNTDOWN TO DISASTER
Elamine lived in a middle-class Beirut suburb, where his mother, Ibtissam Berri, helped care for his children, then aged five and three.
Elamine ran Surf Lebanon, a surfing school based out of a beach shack in Jiyeh, a small village 30km south of Beirut.
The 60 Minutes crew, pictured with then-Nine executive Darren Wick (second right), after their return to Australia following the botched Beirut abduction that made global headlines
The luxury Mövenpick Hotel, on Beirut's Mediterranean coast, was where the 60 Minutes crew stayed for four nights. They were arrested there after returning from the child abduction operation, which had been intended to boost Nine's ratings
Whittington, who had successfully returned children to parents in other international child-recovery operations, had recruited Mohammed Hamza, a Beirut weightlifter and driver, who was casing out the scene of the proposed abduction.
He would be paid around $500. The driver of the rental car for the snatch, Khaled Barbour, would reportedly never be paid in the legal melee that ensued.
Meanwhile, Elamine sensed he was being watched.
Most mornings, he walked his children to school in Al Hadath, southern Beirut, an area heavily patrolled by Hezbollah and monitored by the Amal movement, a Lebanese political party and militia.
Elamine was connected to the latter by dint of the Amal parliamentary speaker who was his mother's cousin. Amal's security network controlled Lebanon's ports and airports.
On April 2, Faulkner arrived in Beirut with Whittington and the 60 Minutes team: presenter Tara Brown, producer Stephen Rice, cameraman Ben Williamson, and sound recordist David Ballment.
The TV crew checked into the upscale Mövenpick Hotel on the Mediterranean coast, complete with a private beach. Meanwhile, the abduction team stayed in far less luxurious accommodation as their covert operation got under way.
On the morning of April 6, Elamine was called south for a last-minute surfing lesson by a persistent client, leaving his mother and her maid to walk the children to school along the busy street.
Whittington's four-person team, along with the 60 Minutes crew filming nearby, were in position as the two women walked the children towards a bus stop - and directly into the trap.
Caught on CCTV, the moment Faulkner's children were snatched back on a Lebanon street by a child abduction recovery agent paid for by 60 Minutes
Tara Brown is escorted to prison by Lebanese policemen
Baabda Women's Prison, where Brown and Faulkner were detained for two weeks in 2016
Wearing masks, the men rushed out of a van, grabbed the children, pushed their grandmother aside, knocking her over, and sped off.
The children were bundled into the getaway car, where Faulkner was already waiting in the back as cameraman Williamson filmed the scene.
The crew followed in another car as the snatched children were driven six kilometres to a 'safe house' in the suburb of Sabra.
The footage was intended to provide a dramatic segment - or several - for the current affairs program, and was expected to give its struggling ratings a major boost.
Documents later confirmed that, at this stage, Channel Nine's accounts department had paid Whittington the first of two fees totalling $110,000.
After her grandchildren were snatched and she was knocked over, the grandmother immediately called her son, who contacted police, the Australian embassy, and Faulkner.
Sally and her children ended up in a location that was not the intended safe house, the Napoleon Hotel near Beirut Marina, which was meant to be their planned escape point from Lebanon.
A last-minute change had forced them instead to a small, cramped apartment belonging to Mohammed Hamza's mother, where the Nine crew filmed Faulkner's reunion with her children.
Faulkner and Brown as they were released from prison
Adam Whittington led the operation, but a phone Faulkner used to call Elamine was traced back to him. He was arrested at Beirut Marina, where a motor cruiser was on standby to take the children to Cyprus
The post-kidnap narrative was to include a phone call from Faulkner to Elamine to tell him the kids were safe and with her.
Meanwhile, Whittington had driven to the marina where a 20-metre-long Greek super cruiser was on stand-by.
The boat was meant to whisk Faulkner and her children from Lebanon across the Mediterranean Sea to Cyprus, a trip of about four hours.
Elamine later claimed he was aware of the recovery attempt because his estranged wife's email account was linked to their daughter's iPad - a detail Faulkner denies.
During a street conversation filmed by 60 Minutes on a phone reportedly registered to Whittington, Faulkner told Elamine she would allow him access to the children in the future.
Elamine thundered back, 'Bring them right back, right back now, it's better for you if you do.'
That afternoon, the 60 Minutes crew packed up and departed for their hotel, leaving Faulkner behind in the flat with her children and the Hamza family.
As the hours passed, Faulkner grew increasingly panicked.
She tried reaching Whittington, Brown and the crew - without success - before desperately attempting to contact the Australian Embassy.
Faulkner (centre) with the 60 Minutes crew after Nine paid for their release, from left, sound recordist, David Ballment, Tara Brown, producer Stephen Rice, cameraman Ben Williamson
Beirut police tracked Whittington through the phone and his hotel registration, arresting him on the marina docks.
Officers were waiting at the Mövenpick Hotel when the 60 Minutes crew returned, and the team was handcuffed on arrival.
After a sleepless night - unaware of the arrests - Faulkner spent a few more hours with her children the next morning. She was dressing them when a team of ten heavily armed police burst into the flat.
They arrested Mohammed Hamza, beating him in front of Faulkner's children as the kids screamed and cried in terror.
Brown and Faulkner spent two weeks behind bars in the squalid confines of overcrowded Baabda jail. Faulkner was only freed when she signed an agreement - while still handcuffed - to give up all her claims for custody.
Nine claims that it paid Elamine $690,000 to drop all his claims against the 60 Minutes crew.
Whittington would spend almost four months in prison, with some of his team detained for longer.
He later claimed he was 'left to rot in a rat hole' in prison while Nine opened its chequebook and the TV crew enjoyed 'pizza and coffee' and special treatment.
Faulkner faced up to 20 years in Baabda Women's Prison in Beirut (pictured above: an inmate with her child born inside the jail) before agreeing to relinquish custody of her children in exchange for her freedom
His CARI website says 'our commitment to honesty and disciplined approach ensures very high success in returning abducted children to their families'.
Nine was roundly condemned for the doomed Beirut mission.
Although an internal inquiry at the network later found no grounds for dismissal, management stood Rice down after board pressure over the reputational fallout.
Rice later sued and won a settlement of about $2million, with his lawyer arguing he was made the scapegoat for the network's debacle.
Founding producer of the program Gerald Stone, who headed the review into the disaster, described it as 'the greatest misadventure in the 37 years of 60 Minutes'.
After returning home, Faulkner welcomed a second son, followed by a daughter in 2021.
She has kept a comparatively low profile since then, although she has taken to social media - and a podcast interview with influencer Constance Hall - to discuss the Beirut catastrophe and how she would not give up on her older children.
After the Daily Mail was unable to sight Faulkner's older children at the family property, we provided her lawyer with a series of questions, which were not answered.