Vanessa Amorosi’s mother can practically pinpoint the moment she lost her daughter.
After enjoying global success in the early 2000s, the Australian singer packed her bags and moved to the United States.
It was there that she met the man who would become the father of her son Killian, who was born in 2016.
Amorosi would marry Brazilian martial arts trainer Rod Busby in October of the following year.
Amorosi’s mother, Joyleen Robinson, never met her grandson.
She had not even been notified of his birth, but instead learned about it on the news a thousand miles away from the home of her future son, Narre Warren North.
She did not attend the wedding and has not spoken directly to her daughter for 15 years, around the time Amorosi moved to Los Angeles, California.
In September, Robinson told Daily Mail Australia she remembered feeling uncomfortable the moment she met Busby.
Vanessa Amorosi has been away from her family for 15 years
He had come to Australia with Amorosi for a concert and accompanied her to visit family.
“You know when you meet a person for the first time… when you meet someone new and they’re all over you?” she said.
‘My nickname for all my children is Juicy Joy. I don’t know why they called me that, but they called me that. And a grown man, I didn’t know him from Razoo, came into my house and said “Oh, hello Juicy Joy” and I cringed.
‘That silly name is only for my children. You know what I mean.’
Robinson said he shared no ill will against Busby, who he suspected had since become estranged from his daughter.
It’s a claim Amorosi has yet to address, and Daily Mail Australia’s questions to his publicist have been ignored.
Daily Mail Australia also contacted Busby but he did not respond.
Joyleen Robinson attends court during the trial in the Supreme Court of Victoria last year.
Robinson said the couple owned a gym in the United States, which he suspected Amorosi paid for.
Robinson alleged that Amorosi’s move to the United States made her vulnerable to the influence of lawyers, who persuaded her to take legal action against him.
In October last year, the Australian singer took the witness stand at a Supreme Court trial in Melbourne to describe how her mother had allegedly mismanaged her finances and turned her family against her.
The Narre Warren North property that has torn the Amorosi family apart
Amorosi’s horse remains on the Narre Warren North property
A shack at the bottom of the Amorosi farm is run down
The court heard the singer believed her mother had exploited her wealth during the height of her popularity when she was just a teenager.
“She’s being very generous with my money,” Amorosi said.
Amorosi told the court that he had been brainwashed into believing that his mother was the only person he trusted to handle the millions of dollars he earned after becoming a star in 2000.
‘That had happened since (I) was young. You couldn’t trust anyone. Like that’s something that’s just… not your parents, not your best friends, not your management, not your stepdad. The person at the end of the day you should trust is your mother,” Amorosi said, breaking down into tears.
“She’s there because she truly loves me and doesn’t need anything from me other than to be her daughter.” And so, as time went on, and I made more money and became more successful, everyone became enemies.
‘The boyfriends were enemies, the husband was the enemy. She was going to be the only one there with the right intentions and I believed it.
Amorosi, who flew to Australia from Los Angeles to attend the trial, had become suspicious of her mother’s dealings with her fortune in 2014 when she hired forensic accountants to begin investigating her mother’s handling of her wealth.
After enduring a lengthy trial that turned into a media circus, Amorosi won the case and was awarded the Narre Warren North home that her mother claims she had been gifted.
But it wasn’t a complete victory for Amorosi, who was ordered to pay his mother $650,000 plus $219,486.33 in interest in the form of “restitution,” a total of nearly $870,000.
Amorosi claimed his mother exploited his fortune at the height of his fame
Dave Stewart and Vanessa Amorosi of Eurythmics perform at Henley Festival 2024 at Leander Club on July 11, 2024
Robinson claimed that a brain aneurysm his daughter allegedly suffered before Killian’s birth caused him to forget the agreement.
In court, Ms Robinson argued that she reached an agreement with Amorosi in 2001 to obtain full ownership of the Narre Warren North house in exchange for a future lump sum payment of $650,000.
She claimed the agreement was that if Amorosi ever ran into financial difficulties, Ms Robinson would pay him the original $650,000 purchase price of the Narre Warren home.
Evidence presented during the trial showed that Ms. Robinson and her husband, Peter Robinson, transferred $710,000 from the sale of their home to pay Ms. Amorosi’s $1.2 million California mortgage in 2014.
‘You’re a mother and you have four children, why on earth would you give one daughter everything you’ve worked for and forget about the other three?’ Ms Robinson told Daily Mail Australia.
With her fate now uncertain, Robinson said she believed her daughter had been manipulated by lawyers.
“A lot of the things that have happened to me as a mother are not even close to what my daughter has experienced,” Robinson said.
-He looks like your lawyer. It seems like you have a good, strong lawyer who does everything and Vanessa is the kind of person who, if you don’t understand it, will just let them deal with it.’
While the victory was awarded to Amorosi, it is still unclear how he plans to pay court-ordered restitution to his mother.
The matter returned to the Supreme Court last month after negotiations between lawyers representing the mother and daughter collapsed.
Amorosi’s attorney, Joel Fetter, said the singer was presenting two of three options for a settlement between the couple following the court ruling.
In the first, Fetter said Amorosi would allow his mother to stay in the house if she was bought out of the regional property.
Otherwise, Ms Robinson could choose to sell the property, although the court was told there were disagreements over how and for how much this would happen.
In the second option, Ms Amorosi was required to make a net payment to Ms Robinson after money was exchanged in order of costs between the couple.
On Thursday, Robinson’s son Anthony told Daily Mail Australia his family would not move until restitution had been paid.
“The crazy truth is that if Vanessa had come with Mom instead of doing all this, Mom would have been happy to have sold the place. We wouldn’t have anywhere to go, though. Once we lose this place, we’ll have nowhere to go,” the man said. Mr. Robinson.
‘Mom isn’t too worried about losing the house. It’s losing your daughter. Losing your grandson. She is really determined to meet her grandson.
