In 2017, churchgoer Sargon Eshow, who established a denunciation against Mar Meelis on Facebook, was ordered to pay $150,000 in damages after the religious leader sued him for calumny in the NSW Supreme Court. Eshow was suspended from the church for two years from April 2015, after making a couple of posts on his Facebook page in Arabic derisively criticizing the bishop. He was warned and told to cease from this behaviour. Eshow persevered, where he still went on and accused the archbishop of being evil, a hypocrite and "worse than ISIS". His posts also stated the archbishop was "violent, drunk, dishonest and incompetent and ... made false accusations against the defendant". Justice Lucy McCallum said the defamation was "serious and persistent" and deserved a significant award of restitution.