Antoinette Lattouf has revealed she suffered from paranoia and sleeplessness in the year since she was removed from her presenting role at the ABC, telling the federal court she had been subjected to threats, continually lied about, defamed and derided.
Lattouf gave evidence under cross examination on Tuesday, as part of the unfair dismissal case she has brought against the ABC, telling the court that she had seen a psychiatrist in 2024 about the emotional toll that she had suffered since the events at the ABC in December 2023.
A tearful Lattouf said that she had told Dr Nigel Strauss that she had previously been a social drinker but that recently she had become a heavier drinker and had on occasion drunk to the point of passing out, that she was more reliant on sleeping aids and had become fearful to be in public.
She recalled an occasion where she thought she had been followed in the street by someone in a car.
“I thought I was being followed and ran into a cafe,” she said, though then doubted herself and questioned whether she had been followed. Asked if these fears were new, Lattouf told the court they were. “I’d never been scared to be out in public the way I have been.”
Lattouf told the court she had never wanted to be the “face of all this”. When asked by counsel for the ABC, Ian Neil SC, what she meant by that, she replied: “Ongoing litigation, continually lied about, defamed, derided by the new chair of the ABC at the National Press Club, had the most horrible mis-characterisations about me in Murdoch press.
“I don’t want any of this. I shared a Human Rights Watch post.”
During the gruelling cross-examination – that was originally set down for two hours and has now run for more than four hours over two days – Lattouf cried as she recalled the moment she was told to leave the ABC building.
Lattouf was taken off air three days into a five-day casual contract in December 2023 after she posted on social media about the Israel-Gaza war, which the ABC said was a failure to follow a direction from a manager not to post.
The Fair Work Commission found she was sacked from a casual presenting role on ABC local radio.
The ABC argued at the commission that Lattouf was not sacked because she was paid for the full five days of her contract.
At the heart of the dispute is whether Elizabeth Green, an ABC manager gave her either a direction, a suggestion or a request about posting on social media before Lattouf reposted a report from Human Rights Watch and added additional text reading “HRW reporting starvation as a tool of war”.
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Not at issue is that her social media posting was discussed during a phone call between Green and Lattouf on Tuesday 19 December.
“If another journalist dies, I can’t just say nothing,” Lattouf recalled she said to Green.
The journalist also said Green had revealed that the ABC received complaints after Lattouf was hired as a casual presenter.
“Did Green really use the words ‘heaps of complaints’?” Neil asked Lattouf.
Lattouf said she could not recall the exact words.
“Elizabeth called, and she said, ‘I just wanted to give you a heads up: the ABC has been flooded with complaints… from pro-Israel lobbyists, because we have put you on air’,” Lattouf told the court.
Green’s evidence is scheduled for Thursday.
