September 10, 2025 • 50 mins
When police raided the home of 48-year-old Garry Francis Newman in March 2007, they found him sitting in his lounge room, chatting online with a 14-year-old girl. She thought she was speaking to “Brandon,” a teenage American boy. In reality, Brandon was a carefully crafted fake identity Newman had used to lure girls online. Police would later uncover nearly 200 such identities.
One of those girls was Carly Ryan.
Newman lured Carly to a secluded beach, pretending to be Brandon, and brutally murdered her.
What followed was every parent’s nightmare and one mother’s mission to stop it ever happening again.
Donate to the work at The Carly Ryan Foundation through their website here.
Support is available if you need it:
Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation - https://www.accce.gov.au/
eSafety Commissioner - https://www.esafety.gov.au/key-topics
If any of the contents in this episode have caused distress, know that there is help available via Lifeline on 13 11 14 or Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636.
Our new podcast Watch Party is out now, listen to our deep-dive into The Thursday Murder Club movie on Apple or Spotify.
CREDITS
Guest: Sonya Ryan
Host: Claire Murphy
Senior Producer: Tahli Blackman
Audio Producer: Jacob Round
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
When police raided the home of forty eight year old
Victorian man Gary Francis Newman in March two thousand and seven,
they found him in his launde room chatting to a
fourteen year old girl online.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Now that fourteen year.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Old girl, who lived in Perth, all the way on
the other side of the country to Newman, didn't realize
she was speaking to an older man, nor did she
realize she was chatting to a murderer. For eighteen months,
Newman had been posing online as a teenage boy named Brandon.
Brandon played guitar and was the poster boy for every.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Teenage girl's fantasy.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
He was broody, gorgeous, an American boy who was forced
to move to Melbourne, Australia with his family from Texas.
Brandon spoke like a teenager, looked like a teenager, but
in reality, he was a carefully crafted identity, one of
nearly two hundred Police When Uncover, created by a nearly
fifty year old man who used that identity to lure
(00:59):
young girls into his wad web. One of those girls
was Carly Ryan. Brandon had been having conversations with one
of Carl's friends, so when she joined the chat. She
had no reason to suspect that he wasn't who he
said he was.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
After all, her friend had.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Essentially vouched for him, she already knew him. The flirtatious
Brandon told Carlie all the things a young girl would
want to hear, and over the course of their online relationship,
Carly asked her new guitar playing friend to come visit
her at her home in the Outlaide Hills in South Australia.
She was about to turn fifteen and she wanted to
invite him to her birthday party on the January twenty
(01:35):
sixth Long weekend, but Brandon couldn't make it. He told
Carli that he was flying back to the US for
a quick visit, but said his dad, Shane, was keen
to meet her. Could he come instead. Carli asked her mum, Sonya,
if she could add Shane to.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
The invite list.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Despite feeling like it was a bit strange, Sonya relented,
after all, she'd met with most of her daughter's friend's parents.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Newman wasted no.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Time after arriving at Carly's home in Sterling, Sonia remembers
feeling like he was a creep from the outset Trusting
her instinct, she demanded he leave, emailing him afterwards telling
him never to come near her daughter ever again, warning
him if he did, she would call police.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Sonia didn't know then, but Newman.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Had bought her fifteen year old daughter items of sexually
provocative clothing, and he was angry that he didn't get
to live out his twisted fantasy. He'd come so close
to getting what he'd been working eighteen months to secure,
so he returned home to Victoria, where he hatched another
plan to capture his young victim. I'm Claire Murphy and
(02:45):
This is True Crime Conversations, a podcast exploring the world's
most notorious crimes by speaking to the people who know
the most about them. What happened to carl Ryan next
is every Parent's worst Nightmare, and used his online persona
of Shane to convince Carli to meet with him in
the South Australian coastal town of Port Elliott, nearly an
(03:07):
hour and a half from her home. Now, Carlie knew
her mum wouldn't agree to it, so she told Sonya
she was going to a friends for a sleepover. Instead,
she traveled the more than eighty kilometers to meet up
with Newman, who took her to the local beach, Horshoe Bay.
They sat in the dunes away from any prying eyes.
Newman giving Carlie a joint to smoke. Before getting his
(03:29):
revenge on the fifteen year old for forcing him from
her birthday party. He took a rock and smashed it
into Carli's head. He then pushed her face into the
sand to suffocate her. After he was sure she was dead,
he began to walk away, but just as he did,
Carli coughed. It would be the last thing she did
(03:50):
before she was dragged into the ocean and drowned in
the shallows. Her body found floating face down when Newman
had left her. What happened after Sonya Ryan was told
her daughter had been murdered is a mixture of frustration
that a man so clearly guilty would defend himself to
the very end, but also of the resilience of a
(04:11):
mother who will never allow her daughter's death to be
for nothing. Sonya Ryan joins us. Now, Sonya, thank you
so much for spending some time with us here on
True Crime Conversations.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Today, we are going to talk quite a bit about your.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
Life's work since the passing of your daughter back in
two thousand and seven. But I guess where we wanted
to start today is what happened to you is everybody's
worst nightmare, every parent's worst nightmare.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
I am the mother of a ten year old daughter.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
Even sometimes reading back Calli's story makes me feel anxious
and unsettled. And I wonder how you felt in that
moment when police told you what happened to Kari, because
I can only imagine I would have just exploded into
a thousand pieces, never.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
To be put back together. How did you How did
you react in that moment?
Speaker 3 (05:09):
Well? I think initially, you know, we were looking for
her because she hadn't turned up at her friend's house
as she was supposed to, and so we were in
this kind of panic, you know, And when police started
rolling in the back door, I just thought, this seems
a bit strange. And even when, you know, as I
(05:30):
started coming in the door, I saw one officer had
a tear running down his face, and in that moment,
I was like, what earth is going on? You know
this you can imagine, you know, we're just at the
beginning of the Internet. We're you know, just really connecting
smartphones are just coming in. So you know, this crime
(05:51):
type had never happened in Australia before, so there's no
way to prepare for hearing that kind of news from
a police officer. So detectives walked in and said that
they'd found the body of a girl matching the description
of Carli, and I just remember thinking, what do you
(06:11):
mean a body?
Speaker 4 (06:12):
And so.
Speaker 3 (06:14):
You know, you just go into shock, You go into
incredible shock, and every part of you, I guess, really
dissolves on the spot.
Speaker 4 (06:25):
You know, you're conditioning.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
Layers of yourself just kind of fall away, and you're
left in a very raw state. And it was kind
of stepping into.
Speaker 4 (06:38):
A horror movie.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
That's probably the best way I can describe it, because
nothing prepares you for hearing those words. But then people
forget that's just the very beginning. From that point, it's identification. It's,
you know, the worst possible experience that I would hope
(07:02):
nobody has to go through. You know, how I'm still
sitting here today talking to you is you know, beyond
a blessing. I mean, I just I really, you know,
all I can equate it to is a power of love.
You know, that connection between myself and my daughter and
(07:23):
really sitting with that thought of what would she want
me to do? You know, what do I do in
this situation? And it's really the minute by minute of existence,
because to go any further than that, the mind can't
comprehend it. So you know, the body goes into extraordinary shock,
(07:44):
terrible trauma, and you kind of just existing in this
no man's land. That's really the best way that I
can describe it to listeners.
Speaker 4 (07:54):
It's kind of you enter this void.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
And it's almost as if time stops and you're just
kind of watching the world spin around you, and time
keeps on ticking, but you're just in this very disassociated,
strange place and all the information that's coming at you
from detectives and then we have the media, you know,
(08:17):
banging on the door at six o'clock in the morning
every morning and not being able to open the curtains
at home because of course, Carli was the first girl
murdered by online predator in Australia. This was you know,
a shock to the nation and so everybody wanted to
report about it. But of course this was not a story.
This is what I was living, and you know, the fallout,
(08:43):
you know, beyond that moment, the tidal wave of trauma
and the continuation of additional trauma was something that will
never leave me. It was, you know, beyond horrifying. Didn't
only lose my daughter, which I adored, but you know,
(09:07):
her brother lost a sister, her family lost her, her
friends lost her. You know, the fallout from losing her
was horrific, and just the circumstances in which it happened
were you know, really, I just still today don't have
the words for it, and I still in the work
(09:28):
that I do, just sometimes can't believe that this is
my reality. And you know, again, I just have to
focus my whole attention to really the work, the end
focus and again coming back to thinking about what Carlie
(09:49):
would want me to do, and that is to make
sure that what happened to her doesn't happen to another
innocent child, for no other parent to have to stand
behind a curtain and identify their beaten child. You know,
it's it's a horrible thing to speak about, but this
is a reality of what this crime looks like, you know,
(10:10):
And it's not only myself, but it's the detectives working
on cases like this that suffer that have to, you know,
view terror bytes of child abuse material. The investigations I
do are just awful, you know. So in general, you know,
it's a topic that most people just don't even want to,
(10:32):
you know, talk about least we'll hear about. But you know,
I've made up my mission to talk, to bring this
subject to light, and to bring it into the light,
so to speak, so that we can, you know, prevent
this from happening to other kids. But essentially, the trauma
was really bad, and I think it took me about
(10:53):
four years to even come to any kind of acceptance
that that had even happened. And thankfully I was shipped
off to a Buddhist temple in France in the mountains
and met with the author of the Tibetan Book of
Living and Dying and the Dalai Lama and his team.
And I'm not particularly religious, but that really helped me
(11:17):
because there was no distractions and I had.
Speaker 4 (11:19):
To sit with the pain of it all.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
And you know, I think listeners could probably relate to
when we feel pain, what do we do? We look
for distraction, right, we look for anything to do but
feel it. But that is the worst thing you can do,
you know, I really had to sit with the pain.
I had to sit with it and feel it and
(11:43):
let it run its course. And honestly, I truly believe
that because I did that and didn't self medicate, didn't
you know, I didn't drink alcohol. I just kept myself
really clear. I think that, honestly, that's why I'm alive today, because,
you know it even though it was the most horrendous
journey and it was just you know, unbelievable waves of
(12:12):
terror and pain and just that separation anxiety from her,
you know, the thought of never seeing her again, it
was just oh my gosh, it was just you know,
how do you put into words, you know, And again,
I just I hope that anyone listening never has to
go through anything like it. But you know, coming away
(12:33):
from that retreat in France gave me the ability to
be able to ground, to be able to be with myself,
to be able to transform the trauma into a way
of being able to benefit others and help others. It
gave me the ability to learn meditation, which again saved
(12:55):
me being able to be present, to be in the
moment to you know, again sit with that pain, and
you know, it just gave me this real tunnel vision
focus to do everything I could to change the online
safety landscape in Australia and beyond.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
Well, we'll talk about that in a second, because the
Calie Ryan Foundation has achieved some remarkable things. But I'm
so interested to know how you have viewed in the
time since your daughter passed, because, as you mentioned, this
had never happened before. There was no precedent to set
this by. And you know, we're talking about the time
(13:35):
of MySpace, you know, where we hadn't really gotten the
platforms that we now all use today. But over these
years you would have seen these social media platforms and
others become more and more and more a part of
young people's lives, and see how they are more welcomed
into children's homes, into their bedrooms. Like, how do you
(13:56):
view that creep of these social media platforms in to
young people's lives when you know how dangerous it was
for your daughter to be exposed to them.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
Watching you know, smartphones really evolve and connectivity evolve, and
apps evolve. It was really you know, trying to find
solution and balance for the community. So you know, how
can the community use social media or use the Internet
(14:26):
in a positive way, and how can they do so
whilst putting a shield of protection around their children. You know,
the Internet wasn't going anywhere. It kind of took off,
and unfortunately safeguards weren't put in place, you know. And
the reality is at big Tech, their focus is profit
(14:48):
and privacy and they want young people to be on
their sites.
Speaker 4 (14:53):
You know, they want them to.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
Be endlessly scrolling. You know, they developed them to be addicted.
And so we're really up against it as a nation,
as a global nation, to be able to manage these
you know, little devices that our kids have got in
their pockets and have access to everyone and everything at
their fingertips, and I think just people underestimate, you know,
(15:17):
the reach they have and also the ability for people
with the wrong intentions to access their children. So, you know,
I attended the very first Online Safety Summer in Canberra
in twenty ten. I advised on the legislation to open
the Australian Officer of the e Safety Commissioner and slowly
we started to see online safety education sort of an
(15:40):
awareness sort of spread out through the community. And the
very first thing I wanted to do when I incorporated
Colige's legacy, the Carlie Ryan Foundation, was to create an
education program for schools and that was called Project Connect.
And so that was really important to me to get
in front of kids, but also to not terrify them,
(16:03):
because you know, we've got to remember, it's not the
Internet that's bad. It's not potentially you know, it's not
some of these services that are particularly bad. It's people
using them. It's the users that are using them to
harm or using them to take advantage or to financially
(16:25):
sex store children. It's the people at the other end
that we have to be wary of. And so it
was about, okay, well this is what happened to my daughter,
and you know, we want you to have positive experiences,
and we want to build your protective behaviors, and we
want to build your resilience so that we can reduce
the risk of this happening to you.
Speaker 4 (16:43):
Because if you're.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
Aware of how criminals, you know, are accessing your information
and accessing you, and the tools they use and the
techniques they use, if you're aware of these things, then
you're less likely to become a victim. And if you
do become a victim, you do see or hearing anything online,
(17:04):
then you know where to go, you know where to report,
you know who to come to. You can come to
the Carlie Ryan Foundation, Officer of the Safety Commissioner, the ACE,
the Surrunding Centered Account to Child Expectation. So we've come
a long way since I've lost Carly, but it has
been a very rigorous journey of advising the government on
(17:25):
a national and state level, advising on legislation and really
doing what I can to you know, I guess put
up some kind of roadblock so that those predators and
criminals are less likely to be able to reach an
innocent child. You know, our kids are so vulnerable, and
(17:50):
you know their priority is to be a part of something,
you know, to feel wanted, needed, to be a part
of a community, you know, to feel that they fit
in and be part of that community. So you know,
that's their focus, and it can particularly make them vulnerable
if they have low self esteem or if they have
(18:11):
any kind of issues, then they're more likely to you know,
get online and ask people for opinions or you know,
they may be more vulnerable to that, you know, unwanted contact,
and that's really a tool that criminals use to get in,
they look for vulnerabilities of a young person and try
and fill that gap, try and feel those vulnerabilities. And
(18:32):
so you know, this is I guess, just a very
small way of you know, having the community sort of
understand how criminals operate, which then gives them the ability
to put up those protective barriers. So the Project Connect
education program has been great. It runs nationally or a
(18:53):
trusted safety education provider, and you know, that's been really successful.
But also just creating awareness. You know, people don't want
to talk about this crime type when it comes to
child abuse or online child exploitation. People just think, oh,
you know, that doesn't happen in our community, That won't
happen to my child. This is a horrible subject. I
(19:15):
don't want to talk about it. I mean, before the
Internet came along and children were exploited offline, it still
wasn't spoken about in the community. You know, It's been
an issue for centuries. And so really it's people like
me who are really shining a spotlight on this crime
type and asking the community to face this and for
(19:35):
us to come together to fight it, you know, and
do what we can to protect our kids. Because all
children have the right to get online and have a
positive experience and use services for you know, connection for education,
for you know, being able to access really great mental
health services or whatever it may be without having to
(19:57):
be consented that they're going to get a d M
from some creep or you know, being asked for nudes
you know, on an app or a messaging app or whatever.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
You're listening to True Crime Conversations with me, Claire Murphy.
I'm speaking with Sonya Ryan, the founder and CEO of
the Carly Ryan Foundation, established in memory of her daughter Carlie,
who was tragically murdered by an online predator in two
thousand and seven.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
Up next, Sonia tells us.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
Whether she suspected that the person who killed her daughter
was Gary Francis Newman. Let me go back to two
thousand and seven, after you said the police had told
you that they had discovered a body that matches Carlie's description,
and you've come to the realization that your daughter has
(20:46):
actually been murdered. Did you suspect the man that had
been in your home you'd met Carl's killer in the
weeks beforehand. Did you have your suspicions back then that
he might be responsible.
Speaker 3 (21:00):
Oh yeah, because I kicked him out of our home.
When when I realized that something wasn't quite right, did
my mind go to a murderer. Absolutely not. My mind
went to somebody's creepy dad who was acting a bit strange.
I mean, our whole family was in the home, you know,
so it wasn't just myself and Carli. It was coming
up to her birthday and everybody was there, and you know,
(21:24):
these types of people put on a facade that I
just saw. I don't know if you'd call it a
mom's instinct. There was just something not right a couple
of times, the way that he looked at her. He
didn't particularly sit near her or anything like that, but
it was just something that wasn't right. And of course
(21:44):
we now know that he was operating the profile of
the so called teenage boy which he claimed to be
his son, which was, you know, obviously not true. And
when Carly wouldn't take the call because of all her
friends were there, a family was there for her birthday,
he got really mad and that's when I, you know,
(22:06):
basically said you need to leave this house. I guess
as soon as police came in, there was nobody else
I mean, Carly, we had a very close, you know,
family community. She had loads of friends. You know, we
lived in Adelaide Hills, a really beautiful community.
Speaker 4 (22:25):
There was no one else.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
It was the only person I could think of when
I spoke to police, she has been speaking to these
people online, you know, and then gave them all the
details because of course, when he came to the property,
I asked for identification and I took his registration number. Thankfully,
even though the identification he gave me was fake and
he was wearing a fake security guard shirt. Everything about
(22:50):
him was fake, I still took down those details and
just you know, I just thought I was meeting one
of her friend's dads, you know, And looking back now,
I think, gosh, you know, and a lot of people,
I mean would probably think, well, why would you let
you know this guy turn up to your house. Well,
(23:12):
he portrayed himself as the father of a teenage boy,
just like all of her other friends who had parents.
There was nothing out of the ordinary of you know,
meeting teenager's parents, whether they be in state, out of state.
You know, we often had we had other friends that
were interstate, and so you know, this is Brandon's dad.
(23:34):
You know, I really want you to meet him, Mum.
You know, he's a really nice guy.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
Essentially, something we're encouraged to do, right when our children
are interacting with other children whose homes they might end
up going to, you're encouraged to meet their parents and
get to know them.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
And Jess completely oblivious because you know, we do actually
have a we tend to in Australia have quite a
victim blaming mentality and there has been you know, some
pretty cruel comments around Carly's passing around. You know, well,
(24:07):
what was her mother thinking? Or you know, but people
just forget to understand. I think that when your mind
doesn't operate in that way, when you are an open
person and a loving person, you don't sit around thinking
that somebody you meet on the street could be a killer,
or you know, somebody's parent, you know, a child's parents
(24:31):
house that you send to your child to for a
sleepover is potentially a pedophile. You know, our minds don't
go there because we don't exist in Our reality is
not based in that kind of reality.
Speaker 4 (24:46):
Does that make sense?
Speaker 1 (24:47):
Yeah, it's not the thing that we're led to first
believe of the people we meet, right.
Speaker 3 (24:51):
No, and you always try and see the best in people.
I mean, that's how I was brought up. So you
always give people the benefit of the doubt. Oh well,
you you know, maybe he was going through this and
that's why he behaved like that, or the mind tries
and rationalizes sometimes behaviors that probably aren't so great, right,
(25:11):
We all do it, and so you know, honestly, we
were like I felt like Carly was like a lamb
to the slaughter, Like she was just so open and
loving and loved everybody, believed in everyone. And that's what
he used to manipulate her to get her to meeting
without telling me. He used her kind nature, her loving nature,
(25:36):
her forgiving nature to lure her. And that was part
of the cruelest part of this is you know, that
belief Carly had that she was talking to this young
teenage boy who adored her. She had been speaking to
him for eighteen months. This wasn't an overnight thing, you know,
checking in, how's your homework going, how's your mom, how's
(25:59):
your family like, being invested in her day to day life,
encouraging her. You know, these are the tactics that we
now know criminals use to groom children.
Speaker 4 (26:09):
But back then I perhaps no idea.
Speaker 3 (26:12):
All I saw was a boy at a computer typing
in our kitchen to her on chat.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
You know.
Speaker 3 (26:18):
So we were dealing with how could somebody like me,
as a mum, you know, deal with a manipulative killer
who was operating over two hundred fake profiles online to
lure children. You know, he tried to meet somebody in
the US in Singapore, and then of course met with Carly,
(26:39):
and so I was no match for somebody so manipulative
and cunning. And of course Carli was not either. She
was a child, and she was influenced by an adult.
Speaker 4 (26:52):
You know.
Speaker 3 (26:53):
And you know it's easy to look back and go, well,
what if or why didn't I see this? Or you
can't do that because you know you're dealing with the
situation that is so out of your day to day
reality that you just, like I said, still to this day,
I can't even believe that sometimes this is my reality.
(27:14):
And that Carlie, you know, of course lost the most.
You know, I'm still here. She's not. She didn't get
to experience her life to know what true love really is,
what a family like, what it's like to have a family,
to experience this gift of life that we're all given
and so she lost the most and I just I
(27:35):
really think that, you know, it's my duty to do
everything in my power to make sure that we're protecting
young people online and when we're dealing with criminals who
are using the internet to exploit children, that we are
coming down hard on them with legislation and you know,
(27:56):
doing everything we can to protect the community because far
too often, and then you would have seen this through
the work.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
That you do.
Speaker 3 (28:03):
I mean, how many times does somebody offend against someone
In the next minute they're out on the street again
and then reoffending, and you know, we really have to
do something about that and do more, I think, to
protect to protect young people in this country.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
Well, you.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
Mentioned there that he was operating more than two hundred
profiles and speaking to young girls all over the world
and across Australia. And it didn't, in fact take them
very long to track him down and find him, and
they even found him in mid chat with a fourteen
year old girl when they finally refer him. So there
was quite the mountain of evidence against him. But how
(28:44):
did it make you feel when this finally gets to
court and he pleads not guilty.
Speaker 4 (28:47):
Oh, it's just ridiculous. And do you know what.
Speaker 3 (28:50):
I knew that the truth would come to light because
it always does. And he just lied so much that
when people lie, the lie over the lie over the lie,
eventually they'll slip up right. And I just had this intuition.
(29:10):
I just had this I don't know, ability to kind
of sense that it would come to light, the truth
would come to light. Part of having that level of trauma,
and one of the things that the Buddhists actually talk
to me about when I was in France was when
(29:31):
you are in that much deep trauma and you are
in that groundless grief, you actually have a real sense
of connection and clarity. And so I could just kind
of see what needed to be done very clearly. I
was trying to see. I could just see practical solutions
(29:53):
to problems that we were having when it came in
relation to the online space for children. But I don't know,
I just had this intuition, this sort of sense, and
part of that sense was what stopped me from taking
the drugs that doctors wanted me to take, and you know,
all of these other things that I just knew that
I would lose connection, I'd lose connection to my daughter,
(30:14):
to myself, and I probably would not make it through.
But hearing through the trial all of the evidence was
absolutely unbelievable and shocking. I mean, like I told you
in the beginning, it was like a horror movie. You
can't imagine that somebody would exist, you know, day in
(30:38):
and day out, within fake profiles, conjuring up you know,
ridiculous stories, making up fake families, you know, operating all
of these profiles at once, trying to lure young girls.
And he had a history of you know, abusing women,
so you know, and that's also too thinking about the
(31:01):
humanity of all of this and how another person with
a beating heart could even do something like that to
another let alone a child. So you know, for people
like you and I, who you know, are sort of
loving and care genuine to care about other people, it's
very difficult for people to understand, you know, how others
can do this. And often I think two people think
(31:23):
that people like this can potentially be rehabilitated, only managed.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
So Gary Newman was sentenced to twenty nine year's minimum
for what he did to your daughter. At the time,
you said that you were convinced, had he not been
caught out, that he would continue reoffending until such time
as he was caught.
Speaker 4 (31:46):
Oh.
Speaker 3 (31:46):
Absolutely, absolutely, Yeah, I've never seen somebody so vile, you know,
and just so vindictive and and just I mean, I
don't know what happened to him, you know, through his life,
(32:08):
but to become so vicious towards women and girls, you know.
I guess again, people like you and I you can
never really understand how the mind of a killer works,
and you would never want to write. But my hope
is is never released. And if he is, I mean,
(32:29):
we were part of a devising on the Release on
License bill in South Australia, which prevents a release of
serious offenders back into the community. So you know, that's
something I don't even want to think about.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
Next, Sonia tells us when she decided to establish the
Carli Ryan Foundation in memory of her daughter.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
So talk to me about the Carlie Ryan Foundation.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
Where do you find yourself in that afternoon well of
grief that you were talking about. At what point do
you think I need I need to make this purposeful?
Speaker 3 (33:08):
Really early on, I was just in this panic. Oh gosh,
if this has happened to Carly in South Australia. Then
she's not going to be the first child that's going
to be targeted like this. This is just the beginning.
And so I was like, oh gosh, this is urgent.
We've got to do something to prevent this from happening
(33:32):
to another child. So immediately I thought, okay, what's the
best way to do this. Okay, so let's incorporate a
charitable organization. Let's register it as a harm prevention charity,
and what are the focus areas going to be, what's
the mission going to be? And essentially that would be
to prevent you know, online harms. And then again because
(33:56):
there was just no online safety education at all, it
was all about, Okay, we've got to create an education program.
We need to get this looked at by educators. We
need to start putting this Project Connect Education program out schools.
And then I need to start getting on the government's
(34:17):
back about the fact that technology had taken over and
that legislation had not caught up with current technologies. So
how is it possible for newman to fake his identity
in age to a child online and then try and
meet up with her. And when I did suspect that
(34:37):
something might be up, and I talked to police about it.
They couldn't do anything because he hadn't committed a crime, right,
So where were the gaps in legislation?
Speaker 4 (34:46):
How could we fill those gaps?
Speaker 3 (34:48):
And how could we effectively create awareness in the community
without instilling fear into everybody. Again, it's that fine balance
of you know, we don't want people to be just
totally freaked out and not letting their kids access educational
material or you know, speak to their family overseas or
(35:10):
whatever it might be. So I just had to really
think about those focus areas and then just make a
plan and then just go for it. And so that's
what we did, and just started presenting in schools really quickly.
And because I was there as her mother, of course
that created connection with students. So students, well, Carli could
(35:31):
have been my sister, she could have been my friend.
The young boys would get really protective of the girls,
and you know, I'd want to become Carlie's advocates. And
so there was this real movement, you know, and it
was really quite amazing. And what happened and what we
didn't expect to happen, right at The beginning was, you know,
(35:53):
sharing what had happened to Carl. Then all of a sudden,
young people would come up after the presentation and disclose,
this has happened to me online. Somebody had asked me
if if I'd send them a nude. This person's making
me feel frightened. I just got shown pornography and I'm
terrified what do I do? Or I'm not getting enough
(36:15):
likes and I'm anxious and I don't know how to
handle it, and it's really affecting my life. You know,
it just went crazy. And so you know, obviously we
had you know, the appropriate reporting mechanisms, the disclosure forms,
and you know, helping schools connected, you know, adequate mandatory
(36:36):
reporting resources, and you know, it.
Speaker 4 (36:40):
Just really just took off.
Speaker 3 (36:41):
And I really think sharing what had happened to Carli
created that connection. The created connection for students to feel
like they could just come and talk to us, and
it helped parents and young people reconnect. So kids all
of a sudden understood, hey, my mum and dad are
not just being nosey and trying to stop me having
(37:02):
fun online. There are actual dangers out there, and you know,
with us sort of helping them with dialogue to have
with their children, they could kids could begin to understand
that their motivation, their parents' motivation was love and care
for them, and that they just wanted to have conversations
about Okay, if you hear or see something online that
(37:24):
makes you feel uncomfortable, please come and tell me so
that we can work what we're going to do together.
And if we don't know what to do, we're going
to go to the Carlie Ryan Foundation and they're going
to help us, you know. So that really just took
off through communities, and of course it was just word
of mouth as well, so you know, as each school
talked to another school community, then we just got booked
(37:46):
out and we're booked out constantly months in advance, which
is fantastic. And you know, really from there then became
the legislative work, and that's where I authored Carly's Law.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
Can you talk us through Carl's Law and tell us
how it's worked since it's passed.
Speaker 3 (38:05):
So Carl's Law essentially makes it an offense for someone
to lie about their identity and age online to a
minor under the age of sixteen, and the federal version
that passed in twenty and seventeen.
Speaker 4 (38:18):
Is little broader.
Speaker 3 (38:19):
The state version of South Australia stricter, which includes preparation
to meet. So essentially it helps police to arrest in
the grooming process. And what that does is the idea
behind Carl's Law is being preventative not reactive legislation, right,
so we don't want to deal a lot of legislation
deals with the problem. Once it's happened, Well, then we've
(38:41):
got a child in trauma or worse, they've lost our life.
So what we wanted to do was give police the
ability to rest before a crime had happened, and then
they're able to lay additional charges on top of Carli's
Law and the Australian Federal Police that essentially it's been
like gateway law. It gets them in the door. They'll
get in the door often then and they'll find terrorbots
of child abuse material on computers or other evidence and
(39:04):
then they can lay additional charges. But they have stopped,
they've prevented the meeting, and you know, investigators often take
over the accounts of children and poses those children with
offenders online and so it's been really really useful and
it was the first law of it's kind of in
the world that was, you know, this preventative nature rather
(39:27):
than reactive. And so the UN contacted me and talked
to me about getting into the criminal codes of as
many countries as possible, and that kind of set me
on my global journey, you know, to the UK, to America,
to New Zealand, you know, all over the place from there.
And then COVID hit and we were all kind of stranded.
(39:49):
So I just went to the Minister for Home Affairs
and said, let me out of the country.
Speaker 4 (39:52):
I got work to do. So I just shot off
to America and the rest is history.
Speaker 1 (39:57):
As we might add, Sonya has just turn from an
overseas flight to sit in this studio and talk with
us today, which we are very appreciative of. She's concerned
about the jet lag, but we understand it's all part
of your Yes, if I look a bit rough at
that it'd been, I know that this has taken you
far and wide, and you've achieved so much in the
(40:18):
past few years.
Speaker 2 (40:20):
But how does.
Speaker 1 (40:21):
Sonya the mum continue on as well? Because Carly's not
your only child, you have a soign as well. How
do you continue parenting in the wake of that sort
of devastation. What kind of mum did that turn you into?
Speaker 3 (40:38):
Very difficult? Very very difficult? And you know, my son
has been deeply affected by it, you know. Thankfully he
just had for such a young boy, had this ability
to really connect to what he needed to do to
(40:58):
be okay. He and Carly were really close. And again
I would sit with him and say to him, what
do you think your sister would want you to do? Like,
tell me what you think she'd want you to do.
And he would sit there and say, We'll try to
try and lives. You need to live for her and
make her proud and show her who you are and
(41:21):
what you're capable of doing. Well, he just went to
the gym, and you know, that's the way that he
dealt with his grief and pain. And it was the
best thing that boy could have ever have done. And
I'm so incredibly proud of him, you know, for who
he's turned out to be. He's a remarkable young man
with a real maturity that a lot of young men
(41:44):
his age do not have, you know, So I think
coming out of the other end of that, you know,
is a testament to his resilience and his ability to
strive in the worst of circumstances really, and so you know,
I think again coming back to that connection between us
(42:09):
and really focusing on what Cali would want to do
if it was a reverse situation and something happened to
me and she was here, what would I want for her,
you know, and not letting her suffering be in vain,
you know, I just she suffered so terribly it cannot
(42:32):
be for nothing. And really for me, it's about, you know,
I've got limited time.
Speaker 4 (42:39):
What am I able to do?
Speaker 3 (42:41):
You know, And yes, we've done a lot, but there's
still a lot to do.
Speaker 4 (42:45):
You know.
Speaker 3 (42:45):
We've passed legislation. I'm on a number of global working
groups and a bunch here in Australia advising government. You know,
I'm constantly on the go, and of course now I'm
on some national working groups in America too, And so
it's really about being part of the global conversation and
the global you know, global response to the inappropriate nature
(43:10):
of a lot of platforms and you know, how we
can protect our kids and not only from predators and criminals,
but also from the addictive nature of these platforms and
the mental health issues associated with them. You know, as
soon as smartphones were invented, we saw a huge spike
all of a sudden in mental health issues, and so
(43:32):
you know, there's there's many different layers to this, and
there's so much to do, and like I said, I
have limited time to do it, so I really have
to have that tunnel vision focus and just go for it,
you know, and hope that when it's my time to go,
that I can leave a legacy behind for Kali that's
worthy of, you know, something really special.
Speaker 1 (43:55):
We talked about this a little bit off air, and
I hope you don't mind me asking it. You've in
making what happened to KLi your life's work, you're essentially
forced to relive this moment over and over and over again.
Speaker 2 (44:11):
How do you not fall apart every time you tell
this story?
Speaker 4 (44:17):
I can tell you that.
Speaker 3 (44:20):
Everything I've done has been through that power of love,
every single bit of it. And people underestimate that, I
think underestimate the power of that. And you know, not
taking no for an answer basically, and just being a real,
you know, bull in a china shop when it comes
(44:41):
to dealing with you know, legislators and you know others.
You know, we need to protect our children. You know
there isn't there is no option for no. You know,
we have to try. We owe it to them. I
owe it to my daughter. I couldn't save her, but
what I can do is is save others from the
(45:02):
same fate, from the same level of suffering. And that
is a promise I made to her, and that's one
I intend to keep.
Speaker 1 (45:09):
Were you doing a remarkable job of what that's for sure.
I'd love to know what you think when you see
that photo. I mean I was living and working. I'm
from South Australia, so I remember when this happened. And
that photo, the school photo of Carli, that has become
really quite a snapshot of a moment because it captures
(45:31):
a young schoolgirl who looked like so many other teenagers
did in two thousand and seven. She's got that haircut,
you know, she's a real moment in time in that photo.
What do you see when you look at that because
for the majority of us, we see it and it
just it transports us to a moment where we heard
the news.
Speaker 2 (45:50):
About what happened to Carlie. What do you see when
you look at that school photo?
Speaker 3 (45:55):
Oh, I said, the most beautiful girl. You know, she's
she was so loving and so kind and so compassionate
and funny. You know, I just see the light of
my life. You know, how lucky was I to have
such an incredible daughter to be able to know what
(46:17):
that kind of love is. A lot of people go
their whole lives and never experience love like that. So
I feel so grateful that she was mine. You know,
she still is, you know, even though she's not here
in a physical sense, she is still connected to me.
I think death is physical, you know, it's it's that
(46:43):
love connection.
Speaker 4 (46:44):
Cannot be broken. It's like a thread. And really that's
what I hold on to.
Speaker 3 (46:50):
And you know, maybe who knows, None of us really
know what happens when when it's our time to go,
maybe I might see her beautiful face. You know, that's
all I can hope for when it's my time. But
I can tell you I will fight for her and
fight for every other child out there who you know,
(47:13):
has become a victim of an online crime. You know,
from the latest research, over three hundred and fifty million
children are exploited online every single year.
Speaker 2 (47:24):
Gosh, that's a sobering number, isn't it.
Speaker 3 (47:26):
Yeah, this is a pandemic in itself and as a
community we have to face this. We have to realize
that this is a number one platform for criminals to manipulate,
groom and exploit children, and they're doing an alarming rate
and they have so many different awful tactics and so
(47:48):
you know, really I would say to listeners, be aware
of the apps that your children are on, know how
they work, know the functionality. Talk to your young person
about their privacy settings. Make sure they will come to you,
you know, if they see or hear or something happens
online that makes them feel uncomfortable, or somebody approaches them
for something inappropriate, that I don't feel afraid to come
(48:12):
to you, that they're not going to get in trouble,
that you're going to work with them to help them
to figure out what to do. And for young listeners
to just look after each other and be aware that unfortunately,
we live in a world where there are bad people
out there and there's a lot of them, and you know,
so look after each other too. And I really think
(48:34):
a lot of the time, you know, from our research
shows that young people disclose to other young people. So
you know, if you're a young person and somebody has
one of your friends has mentioned something to you, do
something about it, you know, reach out to us, or
reach out to somebody who could potentially give some advice.
We just launched a new website in America called my
(48:55):
Friend Too. It's hashtag my friend Too, and it's a
platform for friends to be our to go to to
who have received a disclosure from another friend and to
give advice on what to do. So that would be
a good Even though it's in the States right now,
we're wanting to bring it to Australia. But still even
being you know, an American platform, we can still access
it on the Internet and still get advice. It's just
(49:18):
different reporting mechanisms. But you know, that's the sort of
thing that we need to offer our young people and
also to listen to them, you know, listen to their needs,
listen to what it is that they're they're dealing with,
what they're facing, what their fears are, what are the
things that they want to see, you know, and take
that into account, you know, while while we're advising on
(49:40):
legislation and you know, and everything else that we're trying
to do in the background to protect them, to give
them their voice in the process.
Speaker 1 (49:52):
A really big thank you to Sonya for helping us
tell both hers and Carly's story today. We know that
it is indescribably hardh for a parent to relive this.
You can find links to the Curlie Ryan Foundation, the mission,
and where to donate in our show notes. True Crime
Conversations is hosted by me Clare Murphy and produced by
Charlie Blackman, with audio designed by Jacob Brown. If you
(50:14):
want to see more of our content, you can head
over to our Instagram at true Crime Conversations for more details.
Speaker 2 (50:20):
And if you do have.
Speaker 1 (50:21):
A second and you got a lot out of this episode,
please leave us an Apple podcast review or leave a
comment on Spotify.
Speaker 2 (50:27):
Thanks so much for listening.
Speaker 1 (50:28):
I'll be back next week with another True Crime Conversation.
True Crime Conversations acknowledges the traditional owners of land and
waters that this podcast was recorded on
When police raided the home of forty eight year old
Victorian man Gary Francis Newman in March two thousand and seven,
they found him in his launde room chatting to a
fourteen year old girl online.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Now that fourteen year.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Old girl, who lived in Perth, all the way on
the other side of the country to Newman, didn't realize
she was speaking to an older man, nor did she
realize she was chatting to a murderer. For eighteen months,
Newman had been posing online as a teenage boy named Brandon.
Brandon played guitar and was the poster boy for every.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Teenage girl's fantasy.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
He was broody, gorgeous, an American boy who was forced
to move to Melbourne, Australia with his family from Texas.
Brandon spoke like a teenager, looked like a teenager, but
in reality, he was a carefully crafted identity, one of
nearly two hundred Police When Uncover, created by a nearly
fifty year old man who used that identity to lure
(00:59):
young girls into his wad web. One of those girls
was Carly Ryan. Brandon had been having conversations with one
of Carl's friends, so when she joined the chat. She
had no reason to suspect that he wasn't who he
said he was.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
After all, her friend had.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Essentially vouched for him, she already knew him. The flirtatious
Brandon told Carlie all the things a young girl would
want to hear, and over the course of their online relationship,
Carly asked her new guitar playing friend to come visit
her at her home in the Outlaide Hills in South Australia.
She was about to turn fifteen and she wanted to
invite him to her birthday party on the January twenty
(01:35):
sixth Long weekend, but Brandon couldn't make it. He told
Carli that he was flying back to the US for
a quick visit, but said his dad, Shane, was keen
to meet her. Could he come instead. Carli asked her mum, Sonya,
if she could add Shane to.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
The invite list.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Despite feeling like it was a bit strange, Sonya relented,
after all, she'd met with most of her daughter's friend's parents.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Newman wasted no.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Time after arriving at Carly's home in Sterling, Sonia remembers
feeling like he was a creep from the outset Trusting
her instinct, she demanded he leave, emailing him afterwards telling
him never to come near her daughter ever again, warning
him if he did, she would call police.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Sonia didn't know then, but Newman.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Had bought her fifteen year old daughter items of sexually
provocative clothing, and he was angry that he didn't get
to live out his twisted fantasy. He'd come so close
to getting what he'd been working eighteen months to secure,
so he returned home to Victoria, where he hatched another
plan to capture his young victim. I'm Claire Murphy and
(02:45):
This is True Crime Conversations, a podcast exploring the world's
most notorious crimes by speaking to the people who know
the most about them. What happened to carl Ryan next
is every Parent's worst Nightmare, and used his online persona
of Shane to convince Carli to meet with him in
the South Australian coastal town of Port Elliott, nearly an
(03:07):
hour and a half from her home. Now, Carlie knew
her mum wouldn't agree to it, so she told Sonya
she was going to a friends for a sleepover. Instead,
she traveled the more than eighty kilometers to meet up
with Newman, who took her to the local beach, Horshoe Bay.
They sat in the dunes away from any prying eyes.
Newman giving Carlie a joint to smoke. Before getting his
(03:29):
revenge on the fifteen year old for forcing him from
her birthday party. He took a rock and smashed it
into Carli's head. He then pushed her face into the
sand to suffocate her. After he was sure she was dead,
he began to walk away, but just as he did,
Carli coughed. It would be the last thing she did
(03:50):
before she was dragged into the ocean and drowned in
the shallows. Her body found floating face down when Newman
had left her. What happened after Sonya Ryan was told
her daughter had been murdered is a mixture of frustration
that a man so clearly guilty would defend himself to
the very end, but also of the resilience of a
(04:11):
mother who will never allow her daughter's death to be
for nothing. Sonya Ryan joins us. Now, Sonya, thank you
so much for spending some time with us here on
True Crime Conversations.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Today, we are going to talk quite a bit about your.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
Life's work since the passing of your daughter back in
two thousand and seven. But I guess where we wanted
to start today is what happened to you is everybody's
worst nightmare, every parent's worst nightmare.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
I am the mother of a ten year old daughter.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
Even sometimes reading back Calli's story makes me feel anxious
and unsettled. And I wonder how you felt in that
moment when police told you what happened to Kari, because
I can only imagine I would have just exploded into
a thousand pieces, never.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
To be put back together. How did you How did
you react in that moment?
Speaker 3 (05:09):
Well? I think initially, you know, we were looking for
her because she hadn't turned up at her friend's house
as she was supposed to, and so we were in
this kind of panic, you know, And when police started
rolling in the back door, I just thought, this seems
a bit strange. And even when, you know, as I
(05:30):
started coming in the door, I saw one officer had
a tear running down his face, and in that moment,
I was like, what earth is going on? You know
this you can imagine, you know, we're just at the
beginning of the Internet. We're you know, just really connecting
smartphones are just coming in. So you know, this crime
(05:51):
type had never happened in Australia before, so there's no
way to prepare for hearing that kind of news from
a police officer. So detectives walked in and said that
they'd found the body of a girl matching the description
of Carli, and I just remember thinking, what do you
(06:11):
mean a body?
Speaker 4 (06:12):
And so.
Speaker 3 (06:14):
You know, you just go into shock, You go into
incredible shock, and every part of you, I guess, really
dissolves on the spot.
Speaker 4 (06:25):
You know, you're conditioning.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
Layers of yourself just kind of fall away, and you're
left in a very raw state. And it was kind
of stepping into.
Speaker 4 (06:38):
A horror movie.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
That's probably the best way I can describe it, because
nothing prepares you for hearing those words. But then people
forget that's just the very beginning. From that point, it's identification. It's,
you know, the worst possible experience that I would hope
(07:02):
nobody has to go through. You know, how I'm still
sitting here today talking to you is you know, beyond
a blessing. I mean, I just I really, you know,
all I can equate it to is a power of love.
You know, that connection between myself and my daughter and
(07:23):
really sitting with that thought of what would she want
me to do? You know, what do I do in
this situation? And it's really the minute by minute of existence,
because to go any further than that, the mind can't
comprehend it. So you know, the body goes into extraordinary shock,
(07:44):
terrible trauma, and you kind of just existing in this
no man's land. That's really the best way that I
can describe it to listeners.
Speaker 4 (07:54):
It's kind of you enter this void.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
And it's almost as if time stops and you're just
kind of watching the world spin around you, and time
keeps on ticking, but you're just in this very disassociated,
strange place and all the information that's coming at you
from detectives and then we have the media, you know,
(08:17):
banging on the door at six o'clock in the morning
every morning and not being able to open the curtains
at home because of course, Carli was the first girl
murdered by online predator in Australia. This was you know,
a shock to the nation and so everybody wanted to
report about it. But of course this was not a story.
This is what I was living, and you know, the fallout,
(08:43):
you know, beyond that moment, the tidal wave of trauma
and the continuation of additional trauma was something that will
never leave me. It was, you know, beyond horrifying. Didn't
only lose my daughter, which I adored, but you know,
(09:07):
her brother lost a sister, her family lost her, her
friends lost her. You know, the fallout from losing her
was horrific, and just the circumstances in which it happened
were you know, really, I just still today don't have
the words for it, and I still in the work
(09:28):
that I do, just sometimes can't believe that this is
my reality. And you know, again, I just have to
focus my whole attention to really the work, the end
focus and again coming back to thinking about what Carlie
(09:49):
would want me to do, and that is to make
sure that what happened to her doesn't happen to another
innocent child, for no other parent to have to stand
behind a curtain and identify their beaten child. You know,
it's it's a horrible thing to speak about, but this
is a reality of what this crime looks like, you know,
(10:10):
And it's not only myself, but it's the detectives working
on cases like this that suffer that have to, you know,
view terror bytes of child abuse material. The investigations I
do are just awful, you know. So in general, you know,
it's a topic that most people just don't even want to,
(10:32):
you know, talk about least we'll hear about. But you know,
I've made up my mission to talk, to bring this
subject to light, and to bring it into the light,
so to speak, so that we can, you know, prevent
this from happening to other kids. But essentially, the trauma
was really bad, and I think it took me about
(10:53):
four years to even come to any kind of acceptance
that that had even happened. And thankfully I was shipped
off to a Buddhist temple in France in the mountains
and met with the author of the Tibetan Book of
Living and Dying and the Dalai Lama and his team.
And I'm not particularly religious, but that really helped me
(11:17):
because there was no distractions and I had.
Speaker 4 (11:19):
To sit with the pain of it all.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
And you know, I think listeners could probably relate to
when we feel pain, what do we do? We look
for distraction, right, we look for anything to do but
feel it. But that is the worst thing you can do,
you know, I really had to sit with the pain.
I had to sit with it and feel it and
(11:43):
let it run its course. And honestly, I truly believe
that because I did that and didn't self medicate, didn't
you know, I didn't drink alcohol. I just kept myself
really clear. I think that, honestly, that's why I'm alive today, because,
you know it even though it was the most horrendous
journey and it was just you know, unbelievable waves of
(12:12):
terror and pain and just that separation anxiety from her,
you know, the thought of never seeing her again, it
was just oh my gosh, it was just you know,
how do you put into words, you know, And again,
I just I hope that anyone listening never has to
go through anything like it. But you know, coming away
(12:33):
from that retreat in France gave me the ability to
be able to ground, to be able to be with myself,
to be able to transform the trauma into a way
of being able to benefit others and help others. It
gave me the ability to learn meditation, which again saved
(12:55):
me being able to be present, to be in the
moment to you know, again sit with that pain, and
you know, it just gave me this real tunnel vision
focus to do everything I could to change the online
safety landscape in Australia and beyond.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
Well, we'll talk about that in a second, because the
Calie Ryan Foundation has achieved some remarkable things. But I'm
so interested to know how you have viewed in the
time since your daughter passed, because, as you mentioned, this
had never happened before. There was no precedent to set
this by. And you know, we're talking about the time
(13:35):
of MySpace, you know, where we hadn't really gotten the
platforms that we now all use today. But over these
years you would have seen these social media platforms and
others become more and more and more a part of
young people's lives, and see how they are more welcomed
into children's homes, into their bedrooms. Like, how do you
(13:56):
view that creep of these social media platforms in to
young people's lives when you know how dangerous it was
for your daughter to be exposed to them.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
Watching you know, smartphones really evolve and connectivity evolve, and
apps evolve. It was really you know, trying to find
solution and balance for the community. So you know, how
can the community use social media or use the Internet
(14:26):
in a positive way, and how can they do so
whilst putting a shield of protection around their children. You know,
the Internet wasn't going anywhere. It kind of took off,
and unfortunately safeguards weren't put in place, you know. And
the reality is at big Tech, their focus is profit
(14:48):
and privacy and they want young people to be on
their sites.
Speaker 4 (14:53):
You know, they want them to.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
Be endlessly scrolling. You know, they developed them to be addicted.
And so we're really up against it as a nation,
as a global nation, to be able to manage these
you know, little devices that our kids have got in
their pockets and have access to everyone and everything at
their fingertips, and I think just people underestimate, you know,
(15:17):
the reach they have and also the ability for people
with the wrong intentions to access their children. So, you know,
I attended the very first Online Safety Summer in Canberra
in twenty ten. I advised on the legislation to open
the Australian Officer of the e Safety Commissioner and slowly
we started to see online safety education sort of an
(15:40):
awareness sort of spread out through the community. And the
very first thing I wanted to do when I incorporated
Colige's legacy, the Carlie Ryan Foundation, was to create an
education program for schools and that was called Project Connect.
And so that was really important to me to get
in front of kids, but also to not terrify them,
(16:03):
because you know, we've got to remember, it's not the
Internet that's bad. It's not potentially you know, it's not
some of these services that are particularly bad. It's people
using them. It's the users that are using them to
harm or using them to take advantage or to financially
(16:25):
sex store children. It's the people at the other end
that we have to be wary of. And so it
was about, okay, well this is what happened to my daughter,
and you know, we want you to have positive experiences,
and we want to build your protective behaviors, and we
want to build your resilience so that we can reduce
the risk of this happening to you.
Speaker 4 (16:43):
Because if you're.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
Aware of how criminals, you know, are accessing your information
and accessing you, and the tools they use and the
techniques they use, if you're aware of these things, then
you're less likely to become a victim. And if you
do become a victim, you do see or hearing anything online,
(17:04):
then you know where to go, you know where to report,
you know who to come to. You can come to
the Carlie Ryan Foundation, Officer of the Safety Commissioner, the ACE,
the Surrunding Centered Account to Child Expectation. So we've come
a long way since I've lost Carly, but it has
been a very rigorous journey of advising the government on
(17:25):
a national and state level, advising on legislation and really
doing what I can to you know, I guess put
up some kind of roadblock so that those predators and
criminals are less likely to be able to reach an
innocent child. You know, our kids are so vulnerable, and
(17:50):
you know their priority is to be a part of something,
you know, to feel wanted, needed, to be a part
of a community, you know, to feel that they fit
in and be part of that community. So you know,
that's their focus, and it can particularly make them vulnerable
if they have low self esteem or if they have
(18:11):
any kind of issues, then they're more likely to you know,
get online and ask people for opinions or you know,
they may be more vulnerable to that, you know, unwanted contact,
and that's really a tool that criminals use to get in,
they look for vulnerabilities of a young person and try
and fill that gap, try and feel those vulnerabilities. And
(18:32):
so you know, this is I guess, just a very
small way of you know, having the community sort of
understand how criminals operate, which then gives them the ability
to put up those protective barriers. So the Project Connect
education program has been great. It runs nationally or a
(18:53):
trusted safety education provider, and you know, that's been really successful.
But also just creating awareness. You know, people don't want
to talk about this crime type when it comes to
child abuse or online child exploitation. People just think, oh,
you know, that doesn't happen in our community, That won't
happen to my child. This is a horrible subject. I
(19:15):
don't want to talk about it. I mean, before the
Internet came along and children were exploited offline, it still
wasn't spoken about in the community. You know, It's been
an issue for centuries. And so really it's people like
me who are really shining a spotlight on this crime
type and asking the community to face this and for
(19:35):
us to come together to fight it, you know, and
do what we can to protect our kids. Because all
children have the right to get online and have a
positive experience and use services for you know, connection for education,
for you know, being able to access really great mental
health services or whatever it may be without having to
(19:57):
be consented that they're going to get a d M
from some creep or you know, being asked for nudes
you know, on an app or a messaging app or whatever.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
You're listening to True Crime Conversations with me, Claire Murphy.
I'm speaking with Sonya Ryan, the founder and CEO of
the Carly Ryan Foundation, established in memory of her daughter Carlie,
who was tragically murdered by an online predator in two
thousand and seven.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
Up next, Sonia tells us.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
Whether she suspected that the person who killed her daughter
was Gary Francis Newman. Let me go back to two
thousand and seven, after you said the police had told
you that they had discovered a body that matches Carlie's description,
and you've come to the realization that your daughter has
(20:46):
actually been murdered. Did you suspect the man that had
been in your home you'd met Carl's killer in the
weeks beforehand. Did you have your suspicions back then that
he might be responsible.
Speaker 3 (21:00):
Oh yeah, because I kicked him out of our home.
When when I realized that something wasn't quite right, did
my mind go to a murderer. Absolutely not. My mind
went to somebody's creepy dad who was acting a bit strange.
I mean, our whole family was in the home, you know,
so it wasn't just myself and Carli. It was coming
up to her birthday and everybody was there, and you know,
(21:24):
these types of people put on a facade that I
just saw. I don't know if you'd call it a
mom's instinct. There was just something not right a couple
of times, the way that he looked at her. He
didn't particularly sit near her or anything like that, but
it was just something that wasn't right. And of course
(21:44):
we now know that he was operating the profile of
the so called teenage boy which he claimed to be
his son, which was, you know, obviously not true. And
when Carly wouldn't take the call because of all her
friends were there, a family was there for her birthday,
he got really mad and that's when I, you know,
(22:06):
basically said you need to leave this house. I guess
as soon as police came in, there was nobody else
I mean, Carly, we had a very close, you know,
family community. She had loads of friends. You know, we
lived in Adelaide Hills, a really beautiful community.
Speaker 4 (22:25):
There was no one else.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
It was the only person I could think of when
I spoke to police, she has been speaking to these
people online, you know, and then gave them all the
details because of course, when he came to the property,
I asked for identification and I took his registration number. Thankfully,
even though the identification he gave me was fake and
he was wearing a fake security guard shirt. Everything about
(22:50):
him was fake, I still took down those details and
just you know, I just thought I was meeting one
of her friend's dads, you know, And looking back now,
I think, gosh, you know, and a lot of people,
I mean would probably think, well, why would you let
you know this guy turn up to your house. Well,
(23:12):
he portrayed himself as the father of a teenage boy,
just like all of her other friends who had parents.
There was nothing out of the ordinary of you know,
meeting teenager's parents, whether they be in state, out of state.
You know, we often had we had other friends that
were interstate, and so you know, this is Brandon's dad.
(23:34):
You know, I really want you to meet him, Mum.
You know, he's a really nice guy.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
Essentially, something we're encouraged to do, right when our children
are interacting with other children whose homes they might end
up going to, you're encouraged to meet their parents and
get to know them.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
And Jess completely oblivious because you know, we do actually
have a we tend to in Australia have quite a
victim blaming mentality and there has been you know, some
pretty cruel comments around Carly's passing around. You know, well,
(24:07):
what was her mother thinking? Or you know, but people
just forget to understand. I think that when your mind
doesn't operate in that way, when you are an open
person and a loving person, you don't sit around thinking
that somebody you meet on the street could be a killer,
or you know, somebody's parent, you know, a child's parents
(24:31):
house that you send to your child to for a
sleepover is potentially a pedophile. You know, our minds don't
go there because we don't exist in Our reality is
not based in that kind of reality.
Speaker 4 (24:46):
Does that make sense?
Speaker 1 (24:47):
Yeah, it's not the thing that we're led to first
believe of the people we meet, right.
Speaker 3 (24:51):
No, and you always try and see the best in people.
I mean, that's how I was brought up. So you
always give people the benefit of the doubt. Oh well,
you you know, maybe he was going through this and
that's why he behaved like that, or the mind tries
and rationalizes sometimes behaviors that probably aren't so great, right,
(25:11):
We all do it, and so you know, honestly, we
were like I felt like Carly was like a lamb
to the slaughter, Like she was just so open and
loving and loved everybody, believed in everyone. And that's what
he used to manipulate her to get her to meeting
without telling me. He used her kind nature, her loving nature,
(25:36):
her forgiving nature to lure her. And that was part
of the cruelest part of this is you know, that
belief Carly had that she was talking to this young
teenage boy who adored her. She had been speaking to
him for eighteen months. This wasn't an overnight thing, you know,
checking in, how's your homework going, how's your mom, how's
(25:59):
your family like, being invested in her day to day life,
encouraging her. You know, these are the tactics that we
now know criminals use to groom children.
Speaker 4 (26:09):
But back then I perhaps no idea.
Speaker 3 (26:12):
All I saw was a boy at a computer typing
in our kitchen to her on chat.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
You know.
Speaker 3 (26:18):
So we were dealing with how could somebody like me,
as a mum, you know, deal with a manipulative killer
who was operating over two hundred fake profiles online to
lure children. You know, he tried to meet somebody in
the US in Singapore, and then of course met with Carly,
(26:39):
and so I was no match for somebody so manipulative
and cunning. And of course Carli was not either. She
was a child, and she was influenced by an adult.
Speaker 4 (26:52):
You know.
Speaker 3 (26:53):
And you know it's easy to look back and go, well,
what if or why didn't I see this? Or you
can't do that because you know you're dealing with the
situation that is so out of your day to day
reality that you just, like I said, still to this day,
I can't even believe that sometimes this is my reality.
(27:14):
And that Carlie, you know, of course lost the most.
You know, I'm still here. She's not. She didn't get
to experience her life to know what true love really is,
what a family like, what it's like to have a family,
to experience this gift of life that we're all given
and so she lost the most and I just I
(27:35):
really think that, you know, it's my duty to do
everything in my power to make sure that we're protecting
young people online and when we're dealing with criminals who
are using the internet to exploit children, that we are
coming down hard on them with legislation and you know,
(27:56):
doing everything we can to protect the community because far
too often, and then you would have seen this through
the work.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
That you do.
Speaker 3 (28:03):
I mean, how many times does somebody offend against someone
In the next minute they're out on the street again
and then reoffending, and you know, we really have to
do something about that and do more, I think, to
protect to protect young people in this country.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
Well, you.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
Mentioned there that he was operating more than two hundred
profiles and speaking to young girls all over the world
and across Australia. And it didn't, in fact take them
very long to track him down and find him, and
they even found him in mid chat with a fourteen
year old girl when they finally refer him. So there
was quite the mountain of evidence against him. But how
(28:44):
did it make you feel when this finally gets to
court and he pleads not guilty.
Speaker 4 (28:47):
Oh, it's just ridiculous. And do you know what.
Speaker 3 (28:50):
I knew that the truth would come to light because
it always does. And he just lied so much that
when people lie, the lie over the lie over the lie,
eventually they'll slip up right. And I just had this intuition.
(29:10):
I just had this I don't know, ability to kind
of sense that it would come to light, the truth
would come to light. Part of having that level of trauma,
and one of the things that the Buddhists actually talk
to me about when I was in France was when
(29:31):
you are in that much deep trauma and you are
in that groundless grief, you actually have a real sense
of connection and clarity. And so I could just kind
of see what needed to be done very clearly. I
was trying to see. I could just see practical solutions
(29:53):
to problems that we were having when it came in
relation to the online space for children. But I don't know,
I just had this intuition, this sort of sense, and
part of that sense was what stopped me from taking
the drugs that doctors wanted me to take, and you know,
all of these other things that I just knew that
I would lose connection, I'd lose connection to my daughter,
(30:14):
to myself, and I probably would not make it through.
But hearing through the trial all of the evidence was
absolutely unbelievable and shocking. I mean, like I told you
in the beginning, it was like a horror movie. You
can't imagine that somebody would exist, you know, day in
(30:38):
and day out, within fake profiles, conjuring up you know,
ridiculous stories, making up fake families, you know, operating all
of these profiles at once, trying to lure young girls.
And he had a history of you know, abusing women,
so you know, and that's also too thinking about the
(31:01):
humanity of all of this and how another person with
a beating heart could even do something like that to
another let alone a child. So you know, for people
like you and I, who you know, are sort of
loving and care genuine to care about other people, it's
very difficult for people to understand, you know, how others
can do this. And often I think two people think
(31:23):
that people like this can potentially be rehabilitated, only managed.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
So Gary Newman was sentenced to twenty nine year's minimum
for what he did to your daughter. At the time,
you said that you were convinced, had he not been
caught out, that he would continue reoffending until such time
as he was caught.
Speaker 4 (31:46):
Oh.
Speaker 3 (31:46):
Absolutely, absolutely, Yeah, I've never seen somebody so vile, you know,
and just so vindictive and and just I mean, I
don't know what happened to him, you know, through his life,
(32:08):
but to become so vicious towards women and girls, you know.
I guess again, people like you and I you can
never really understand how the mind of a killer works,
and you would never want to write. But my hope
is is never released. And if he is, I mean,
(32:29):
we were part of a devising on the Release on
License bill in South Australia, which prevents a release of
serious offenders back into the community. So you know, that's
something I don't even want to think about.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
Next, Sonia tells us when she decided to establish the
Carli Ryan Foundation in memory of her daughter.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
So talk to me about the Carlie Ryan Foundation.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
Where do you find yourself in that afternoon well of
grief that you were talking about. At what point do
you think I need I need to make this purposeful?
Speaker 3 (33:08):
Really early on, I was just in this panic. Oh gosh,
if this has happened to Carly in South Australia. Then
she's not going to be the first child that's going
to be targeted like this. This is just the beginning.
And so I was like, oh gosh, this is urgent.
We've got to do something to prevent this from happening
(33:32):
to another child. So immediately I thought, okay, what's the
best way to do this. Okay, so let's incorporate a
charitable organization. Let's register it as a harm prevention charity,
and what are the focus areas going to be, what's
the mission going to be? And essentially that would be
to prevent you know, online harms. And then again because
(33:56):
there was just no online safety education at all, it
was all about, Okay, we've got to create an education program.
We need to get this looked at by educators. We
need to start putting this Project Connect Education program out schools.
And then I need to start getting on the government's
(34:17):
back about the fact that technology had taken over and
that legislation had not caught up with current technologies. So
how is it possible for newman to fake his identity
in age to a child online and then try and
meet up with her. And when I did suspect that
(34:37):
something might be up, and I talked to police about it.
They couldn't do anything because he hadn't committed a crime, right,
So where were the gaps in legislation?
Speaker 4 (34:46):
How could we fill those gaps?
Speaker 3 (34:48):
And how could we effectively create awareness in the community
without instilling fear into everybody. Again, it's that fine balance
of you know, we don't want people to be just
totally freaked out and not letting their kids access educational
material or you know, speak to their family overseas or
(35:10):
whatever it might be. So I just had to really
think about those focus areas and then just make a
plan and then just go for it. And so that's
what we did, and just started presenting in schools really quickly.
And because I was there as her mother, of course
that created connection with students. So students, well, Carli could
(35:31):
have been my sister, she could have been my friend.
The young boys would get really protective of the girls,
and you know, I'd want to become Carlie's advocates. And
so there was this real movement, you know, and it
was really quite amazing. And what happened and what we
didn't expect to happen, right at The beginning was, you know,
(35:53):
sharing what had happened to Carl. Then all of a sudden,
young people would come up after the presentation and disclose,
this has happened to me online. Somebody had asked me
if if I'd send them a nude. This person's making
me feel frightened. I just got shown pornography and I'm
terrified what do I do? Or I'm not getting enough
(36:15):
likes and I'm anxious and I don't know how to
handle it, and it's really affecting my life. You know,
it just went crazy. And so you know, obviously we
had you know, the appropriate reporting mechanisms, the disclosure forms,
and you know, helping schools connected, you know, adequate mandatory
(36:36):
reporting resources, and you know, it.
Speaker 4 (36:40):
Just really just took off.
Speaker 3 (36:41):
And I really think sharing what had happened to Carli
created that connection. The created connection for students to feel
like they could just come and talk to us, and
it helped parents and young people reconnect. So kids all
of a sudden understood, hey, my mum and dad are
not just being nosey and trying to stop me having
(37:02):
fun online. There are actual dangers out there, and you know,
with us sort of helping them with dialogue to have
with their children, they could kids could begin to understand
that their motivation, their parents' motivation was love and care
for them, and that they just wanted to have conversations
about Okay, if you hear or see something online that
(37:24):
makes you feel uncomfortable, please come and tell me so
that we can work what we're going to do together.
And if we don't know what to do, we're going
to go to the Carlie Ryan Foundation and they're going
to help us, you know. So that really just took
off through communities, and of course it was just word
of mouth as well, so you know, as each school
talked to another school community, then we just got booked
(37:46):
out and we're booked out constantly months in advance, which
is fantastic. And you know, really from there then became
the legislative work, and that's where I authored Carly's Law.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
Can you talk us through Carl's Law and tell us
how it's worked since it's passed.
Speaker 3 (38:05):
So Carl's Law essentially makes it an offense for someone
to lie about their identity and age online to a
minor under the age of sixteen, and the federal version
that passed in twenty and seventeen.
Speaker 4 (38:18):
Is little broader.
Speaker 3 (38:19):
The state version of South Australia stricter, which includes preparation
to meet. So essentially it helps police to arrest in
the grooming process. And what that does is the idea
behind Carl's Law is being preventative not reactive legislation, right,
so we don't want to deal a lot of legislation
deals with the problem. Once it's happened, Well, then we've
(38:41):
got a child in trauma or worse, they've lost our life.
So what we wanted to do was give police the
ability to rest before a crime had happened, and then
they're able to lay additional charges on top of Carli's
Law and the Australian Federal Police that essentially it's been
like gateway law. It gets them in the door. They'll
get in the door often then and they'll find terrorbots
of child abuse material on computers or other evidence and
(39:04):
then they can lay additional charges. But they have stopped,
they've prevented the meeting, and you know, investigators often take
over the accounts of children and poses those children with
offenders online and so it's been really really useful and
it was the first law of it's kind of in
the world that was, you know, this preventative nature rather
(39:27):
than reactive. And so the UN contacted me and talked
to me about getting into the criminal codes of as
many countries as possible, and that kind of set me
on my global journey, you know, to the UK, to America,
to New Zealand, you know, all over the place from there.
And then COVID hit and we were all kind of stranded.
(39:49):
So I just went to the Minister for Home Affairs
and said, let me out of the country.
Speaker 4 (39:52):
I got work to do. So I just shot off
to America and the rest is history.
Speaker 1 (39:57):
As we might add, Sonya has just turn from an
overseas flight to sit in this studio and talk with
us today, which we are very appreciative of. She's concerned
about the jet lag, but we understand it's all part
of your Yes, if I look a bit rough at
that it'd been, I know that this has taken you
far and wide, and you've achieved so much in the
(40:18):
past few years.
Speaker 2 (40:20):
But how does.
Speaker 1 (40:21):
Sonya the mum continue on as well? Because Carly's not
your only child, you have a soign as well. How
do you continue parenting in the wake of that sort
of devastation. What kind of mum did that turn you into?
Speaker 3 (40:38):
Very difficult? Very very difficult? And you know, my son
has been deeply affected by it, you know. Thankfully he
just had for such a young boy, had this ability
to really connect to what he needed to do to
(40:58):
be okay. He and Carly were really close. And again
I would sit with him and say to him, what
do you think your sister would want you to do? Like,
tell me what you think she'd want you to do.
And he would sit there and say, We'll try to
try and lives. You need to live for her and
make her proud and show her who you are and
(41:21):
what you're capable of doing. Well, he just went to
the gym, and you know, that's the way that he
dealt with his grief and pain. And it was the
best thing that boy could have ever have done. And
I'm so incredibly proud of him, you know, for who
he's turned out to be. He's a remarkable young man
with a real maturity that a lot of young men
(41:44):
his age do not have, you know, So I think
coming out of the other end of that, you know,
is a testament to his resilience and his ability to
strive in the worst of circumstances really, and so you know,
I think again coming back to that connection between us
(42:09):
and really focusing on what Cali would want to do
if it was a reverse situation and something happened to
me and she was here, what would I want for her,
you know, and not letting her suffering be in vain,
you know, I just she suffered so terribly it cannot
(42:32):
be for nothing. And really for me, it's about, you know,
I've got limited time.
Speaker 4 (42:39):
What am I able to do?
Speaker 3 (42:41):
You know, And yes, we've done a lot, but there's
still a lot to do.
Speaker 4 (42:45):
You know.
Speaker 3 (42:45):
We've passed legislation. I'm on a number of global working
groups and a bunch here in Australia advising government. You know,
I'm constantly on the go, and of course now I'm
on some national working groups in America too, And so
it's really about being part of the global conversation and
the global you know, global response to the inappropriate nature
(43:10):
of a lot of platforms and you know, how we
can protect our kids and not only from predators and criminals,
but also from the addictive nature of these platforms and
the mental health issues associated with them. You know, as
soon as smartphones were invented, we saw a huge spike
all of a sudden in mental health issues, and so
(43:32):
you know, there's there's many different layers to this, and
there's so much to do, and like I said, I
have limited time to do it, so I really have
to have that tunnel vision focus and just go for it,
you know, and hope that when it's my time to go,
that I can leave a legacy behind for Kali that's
worthy of, you know, something really special.
Speaker 1 (43:55):
We talked about this a little bit off air, and
I hope you don't mind me asking it. You've in
making what happened to KLi your life's work, you're essentially
forced to relive this moment over and over and over again.
Speaker 2 (44:11):
How do you not fall apart every time you tell
this story?
Speaker 4 (44:17):
I can tell you that.
Speaker 3 (44:20):
Everything I've done has been through that power of love,
every single bit of it. And people underestimate that, I
think underestimate the power of that. And you know, not
taking no for an answer basically, and just being a real,
you know, bull in a china shop when it comes
(44:41):
to dealing with you know, legislators and you know others.
You know, we need to protect our children. You know
there isn't there is no option for no. You know,
we have to try. We owe it to them. I
owe it to my daughter. I couldn't save her, but
what I can do is is save others from the
(45:02):
same fate, from the same level of suffering. And that
is a promise I made to her, and that's one
I intend to keep.
Speaker 1 (45:09):
Were you doing a remarkable job of what that's for sure.
I'd love to know what you think when you see
that photo. I mean I was living and working. I'm
from South Australia, so I remember when this happened. And
that photo, the school photo of Carli, that has become
really quite a snapshot of a moment because it captures
(45:31):
a young schoolgirl who looked like so many other teenagers
did in two thousand and seven. She's got that haircut,
you know, she's a real moment in time in that photo.
What do you see when you look at that because
for the majority of us, we see it and it
just it transports us to a moment where we heard
the news.
Speaker 2 (45:50):
About what happened to Carlie. What do you see when
you look at that school photo?
Speaker 3 (45:55):
Oh, I said, the most beautiful girl. You know, she's
she was so loving and so kind and so compassionate
and funny. You know, I just see the light of
my life. You know, how lucky was I to have
such an incredible daughter to be able to know what
(46:17):
that kind of love is. A lot of people go
their whole lives and never experience love like that. So
I feel so grateful that she was mine. You know,
she still is, you know, even though she's not here
in a physical sense, she is still connected to me.
I think death is physical, you know, it's it's that
(46:43):
love connection.
Speaker 4 (46:44):
Cannot be broken. It's like a thread. And really that's
what I hold on to.
Speaker 3 (46:50):
And you know, maybe who knows, None of us really
know what happens when when it's our time to go,
maybe I might see her beautiful face. You know, that's
all I can hope for when it's my time. But
I can tell you I will fight for her and
fight for every other child out there who you know,
(47:13):
has become a victim of an online crime. You know,
from the latest research, over three hundred and fifty million
children are exploited online every single year.
Speaker 2 (47:24):
Gosh, that's a sobering number, isn't it.
Speaker 3 (47:26):
Yeah, this is a pandemic in itself and as a
community we have to face this. We have to realize
that this is a number one platform for criminals to manipulate,
groom and exploit children, and they're doing an alarming rate
and they have so many different awful tactics and so
(47:48):
you know, really I would say to listeners, be aware
of the apps that your children are on, know how
they work, know the functionality. Talk to your young person
about their privacy settings. Make sure they will come to you,
you know, if they see or hear or something happens
online that makes them feel uncomfortable, or somebody approaches them
for something inappropriate, that I don't feel afraid to come
(48:12):
to you, that they're not going to get in trouble,
that you're going to work with them to help them
to figure out what to do. And for young listeners
to just look after each other and be aware that unfortunately,
we live in a world where there are bad people
out there and there's a lot of them, and you know,
so look after each other too. And I really think
(48:34):
a lot of the time, you know, from our research
shows that young people disclose to other young people. So
you know, if you're a young person and somebody has
one of your friends has mentioned something to you, do
something about it, you know, reach out to us, or
reach out to somebody who could potentially give some advice.
We just launched a new website in America called my
(48:55):
Friend Too. It's hashtag my friend Too, and it's a
platform for friends to be our to go to to
who have received a disclosure from another friend and to
give advice on what to do. So that would be
a good Even though it's in the States right now,
we're wanting to bring it to Australia. But still even
being you know, an American platform, we can still access
it on the Internet and still get advice. It's just
(49:18):
different reporting mechanisms. But you know, that's the sort of
thing that we need to offer our young people and
also to listen to them, you know, listen to their needs,
listen to what it is that they're they're dealing with,
what they're facing, what their fears are, what are the
things that they want to see, you know, and take
that into account, you know, while while we're advising on
(49:40):
legislation and you know, and everything else that we're trying
to do in the background to protect them, to give
them their voice in the process.
Speaker 1 (49:52):
A really big thank you to Sonya for helping us
tell both hers and Carly's story today. We know that
it is indescribably hardh for a parent to relive this.
You can find links to the Curlie Ryan Foundation, the mission,
and where to donate in our show notes. True Crime
Conversations is hosted by me Clare Murphy and produced by
Charlie Blackman, with audio designed by Jacob Brown. If you
(50:14):
want to see more of our content, you can head
over to our Instagram at true Crime Conversations for more details.
Speaker 2 (50:20):
And if you do have.
Speaker 1 (50:21):
A second and you got a lot out of this episode,
please leave us an Apple podcast review or leave a
comment on Spotify.
Speaker 2 (50:27):
Thanks so much for listening.
Speaker 1 (50:28):
I'll be back next week with another True Crime Conversation.
True Crime Conversations acknowledges the traditional owners of land and
waters that this podcast was recorded on
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