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
GET IN TOUCH
We finally have an Instagram! Follow us @truecrimeconversations
Follow us on TikTok @truecrimeconversations
Want us to cover a case on the podcast? Email us at truecrime@mamamia.com.au or send us a voice note.
Make sure to leave us a rating and review on Apple & Spotify to let us know how you're liking the episodes.
We acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the Land we have recorded this podcast on, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. We pay our respects to their Elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures.
Become a Mamamia subscriber: https://www.mamamia.com.au/subscribe
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
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 laund room chatting to a fourteen year
old girl online. Now, that fourteen year old girl, who
(00:28):
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 teenage girl's fantasy.
(00:48):
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 uncovered, created by a nearly
fifty year old man who used that identity to lure
(01:11):
young girls into his web. One of those girls was
Carlie 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. After all, her friend had essentially vouched for him.
She already knew him. The flirtatious Brandon told Carlie all
(01:32):
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 sixth Long weekend,
but Brandon couldn't make it. He told Carlie that he
was flying back to the US for a quick visit,
(01:54):
but say his dad, Shane was keen to meet her.
Could he come instead. Carlie asked her mum Sonya, if
she could add Shane to the invite list. Despite feeling
like it was a bit strange, n You're relented, after all,
she'd met with most of her daughter's friend's parents. Newman
wasted no time after arriving at Carly's home in Sterling.
(02:15):
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. Sonia
didn't know then, but Newman had bought her fifteen year
old daughter items of sexually provocative clothing, and he was
(02:37):
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 this is True Crime Conversations, a
(03:00):
podcast exploring the world's most notorious crimes by speaking to
the people who know the most about them. What happened
to Carlie Ryan Next is every Parent's worst Nightmare. Newman
used his online persona of Shane to convince Carli to
meet with him in the South Australian coastal town of
Port Elliott, nearly an hour and a half from her home. Now,
(03:22):
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, Horseshoe Bay.
They sat in the dunes, away from any prying eyes.
Newman giving Carlie a joint to smoke. Before getting his
revenge on the fifteen year old for forcing him from
(03:44):
her birthday party, He took a rock and smashed it
into Carly'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
before she was dragged into the ocean and drowned in
(04:05):
the shallow 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
mother who will never allow her daughter's death to be
(04:27):
for nothing. Sonya Ryan joins us. Now, Sonya, thank you
so much for spending some time with us here on
True Crime Conversations. Today, we are going to talk quite
a bit about your 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
(04:50):
to you is everybody's worst nightmare, every parent's worst nightmare.
I am the mother of a ten year old daughter.
Even sometimes reading back Carli's story makes me feel anxious
and unsettled, and I I wonder how you felt in
that moment when police told you what happened to Carli,
(05:13):
because I can only imagine I would have just exploded
into a thousand pieces, never to be put back together.
How did you How did you react in that moment?
Speaker 2 (05:21):
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
(05:42):
started coming in the door, I saw one officer had
a tear running down his face, and in that moment,
I was like, what on 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
(06:03):
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
(06:23):
mean a body? And so, you know, you just go
into shock, you go into incredible shock, and every part
of you, I guess, really dissolves on the spot. You know,
you're conditioning. Layers of yourself just kind of fall away,
(06:46):
and you're left in a very raw state. And it
was kind of stepping into a horror movie. 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
(07:08):
you know, the worst possible experience that I would hope
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,
(07:29):
all I can equate it to is the power of love,
you know, that connection between myself and my daughter, and
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
(07:52):
comprehend it. So you know, the body goes into extraordinary shock,
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. Listeners. It's kind of you enter this
void and it's almost as if time stops and you're
(08:13):
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,
banging on the door at six o'clock in the morning
every morning and not being able to open the curtains
(08:35):
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,
(08:56):
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, in which I adored, but you know,
(09:19):
her brother lost her 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
(09:41):
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 would
(10:02):
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. And it's
(10:23):
not only myself, but it's the detectives working on cases
like this that suffer, that have to you know, view
terror bites 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
(10:44):
to 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
(11:05):
about years to even come to any kind of acceptance
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 because
(11:30):
there was no distractions and I had to sit with
the pain of it all. 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
(11:51):
had to sit with the pain. I had to sit
with it and feel it and 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, even though
(12:13):
it was the most horrendous journey, and it was just
you know, unbelievable waves of 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,
(12:34):
it was just you know, how do you put it
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 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
(12:55):
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 me being able to
be present, to be in the moment to you know,
again sit with that pain. And you know, it just
(13:15):
gave me this real tunnel vision focus to do everything
I could to change the online safety landscape in Australia
and beyond. 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
(13:37):
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 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
(13:57):
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 home, into their bedrooms. Like, how do
you view that creep of these social media platforms into
young people's lives when you know how dangerous it was
for your daughter to be exposed to them watching you know,
(14:19):
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 in a positive way,
(14:40):
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 and privacy, and
(15:02):
they want young people to be on their sites. You know,
they want them to be endlessly scrolling. You know, they
developed them to be addictive, 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
(15:24):
to everyone and everything at their fingertips. And I think
just people underestimate, you know, 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 the
(15:45):
e Safety Commissioner, and slowly we started to see online
safety education sort of an awareness sort of spread out
through the community. And the very first thing I wanted
to do when I incorporated Colie's legacy, the Carlie Ryan Foundation,
was to create an education program for schools was called
(16:06):
Project Connect, and so that was really important to me
to get in front of kids, but also to not
terrify them, 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.
(16:28):
It's people using them. It's the users that are using
them to harm or using them to take advantage or
to financially you know, 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
(16:48):
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.
Because if you're 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
(17:09):
these things, then you're less likely to become a victim.
And if you do become a victim, or you do
see or hearing anything online, then you know where to go,
you know where to report, you know who to come to.
You can come to the Carli Ryan Foundation Officer, the
Safety Commissioner, the ACE, the Strunning Centered Account to Child Expectation.
So we've come a long way since I've lost Carly,
(17:31):
but it has been a very rigorous journey of advising
the government on 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
(17:56):
reach an innocent child. You know, our kids are so vulnerable,
and 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
(18:17):
you know that's their focus, and it can particularly make
them vulnerable. If they have low self esteem or if
they have 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
(18:37):
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 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.
(19:00):
So the Project Connect education program has been great. It
runs nationally or a trusted is Safe 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
(19:22):
doesn't happen in our community, That won't happen to my child.
This is a horrible subject. I 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
(19:43):
shining a spotlight on this crime type and asking the
community to face this and for 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,
(20:04):
being able to access you know, really great mental health
services or whatever it may be without having to be
concerned that they're going to get a DM from some
creep or you know, being asked for nudes you know,
on an app or a messaging app or whatever.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
You're listening to True Crime Conversations with me, Claire Murphy.
I'm speaking with Sonya Ryan, the founder and CEO of
the Carli Ryan Foundation, established in memory of her daughter Carlie,
who was tragically murdered by an online predator in two
thousand and seven. Up next, Sonia tells us whether she
suspected that the person who killed her daughter was Gary
(20:41):
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
come to the realization that your daughter has actually been murdered,
did you suspect the man that had been in your
(21:05):
home you'd met Carl's killer in the weeks beforehand. Did
you have your suspicions back then that he might be responsible?
Speaker 2 (21:13):
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 Carly. It was coming
up to her birthday and everybody was there, and you know,
(21:36):
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
(21:56):
we now know that he was operating the profile of
the so called teenage boy which he claimed to be
his son, which was 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, basically said you need
(22:19):
to leave this house. I guess as soon as police
came in. There was nobody else. I mean, Carlie, 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. There was no one else. It
(22:40):
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 him
(23:03):
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, he portrayed himself
(23:26):
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. You know,
(23:47):
I really want you to meet him, mom. You know,
he's a really nice guy.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
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.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
Them, and just completely oblivious because you know, we do
actually have a we ten 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,
(24:20):
well 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
(24:43):
child's parents 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. Does
that make sense?
Speaker 1 (25:00):
Yeah, it's not the thing that we're led to first
believe of the people we meet, right.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
No, and you always I 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 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, we
(25:24):
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,
(25:49):
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 over night thing,
you know, he checking in, how's your homework going, how's
(26:11):
your mom, how's 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,
But back then perhaps no idea. All I saw was
a boy at a computer, typing in our kitchen to
her on chat.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
You know.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
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,
(26:51):
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,
you know. And 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,
(27:14):
you're dealing with a 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. 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
(27:36):
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 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
(27:59):
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, doing everything we can to
protect the community because far too often, and you would
have seen this through the work that you do. I mean,
how many times does somebody offend against someone In the
next minute they're out on the street again and then reoffending.
(28:23):
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. Well, you.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
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
(28:56):
did it make you feel when this finally gets to
court and he pleads not guilty.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
Oh, it's just ridiculous. And do you know what? 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.
(29:22):
I just had this I don't know, the 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
(29:43):
was when 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
(30:05):
solutions 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
(30:26):
my daughter, 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
(30:50):
in 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 history of abusing women, so you know,
(31:11):
and that's also too thinking about the 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
(31:33):
often I think two people think that people like this
can potentially be rehabilitated, only managed.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
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. Oh.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
Absolutely, absolutely, Yeah, I've never seen somebody so vile, you know,
and just so vindictive and just I mean, I don't
know what happened to him, you know, through his life,
(32:20):
but to become so vicious towards women and girls, you know,
I guess again, people like you and I can 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,
(32:42):
we were part of a devising on the Release on
licensed 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 (32:55):
Next, Sonya tells us when she decided to establish the
Karlie Ryan Foundation in memory of her daughter. So talk
to me about the Carlie Ryan Foundation. Where do you
find yourself in that aftermath well of grief that you
were talking about. At what point do you think I
(33:17):
need I need to make this purposeful.
Speaker 2 (33:21):
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
(33:44):
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
(34:08):
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
(34:29):
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
(34:50):
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? How could we
fill those gaps? 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
(35:13):
to be just totally freaked out and not letting their
kids access educational material or you know, speak to their
family overseas or 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
(35:33):
in schools really quickly. And because I was there as
her mother, of course that creative connection with students. So students, well,
Carli could have been my sister, she could have been
my friend. The young boys would get really protective of
the girls, and you know, I didn't want to become
Carlie's advocates. And so there was this real movement, you know,
(35:58):
and it was really quite amazing. And what happened and
what we didn't expect to happen right at the beginning
was you know, 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.
(36:19):
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 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
(36:40):
disclosure forms, and you know, helping schools connected, you know,
adequate mandatory reporting resources, and you know, it just really
just took off. 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
(37:03):
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 nosy and trying to
stop me having 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 really kids
(37:25):
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 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
(37:46):
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 out and we're booked out constantly months
in advance, which is fantastic. And you know, really from
(38:07):
there then became the legislative work, and that's where I
authored Carly's Law.
Speaker 1 (38:12):
Can you talk us through Carl's Law and tell us
how it's worked since it's passed.
Speaker 2 (38:17):
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 two thousand and seventeen is little broader.
The state version of South Australia stricter, which includes preparation
to meet. So essentially it helps police to arrest in
(38:40):
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
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
(39:02):
they're able to lay additional charges on top of Carli's
Law and the Australian place that essentially it's been like gateway law.
It gets them in the door. They'll get in the
door often then they'll find terrorbots of child abuse material
on computers or other evidence, and then they can lay
additional charges. But they have stopped, they've prevented the meeting.
(39:23):
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 than reactive. And so
the UN contacted me and talked to me about getting
(39:43):
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. So
I just went to the Minister for Home Affairs and said,
(40:03):
let me out of the country. I can work to do.
So I just shut off to America and the rest
is history.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
As we might add, Sonya has actually just returned 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 yours. Yes, if I look a bit rough
at that'd been, I know that this has taken you
far and wide, and you've achieved so much in the
(40:31):
past few years.
Speaker 2 (40:32):
But how does.
Speaker 1 (40:34):
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 2 (40:51):
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
(41:11):
be okay. He and Carli 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 live. You need to live for her and
make her proud and show her who you are and
(41:33):
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
(41:56):
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 his ability
to strive in the worst of circumstances. Really, and so,
you know, I think again coming back to that connection
(42:21):
between us, 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
(42:43):
terribly it cannot be for nothing. And really for me,
it's about, you know, I've got limited time. What am
I able to do? You know, And yes we've done
a lot, but there's still a lot to do. You know.
We've passed legislation. I'm on a number of global working
groups and a bunch here in Australia advising government. You know,
(43:07):
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 global response to the inappropriate nature of a
lot of platforms and you know, how we can protect
our kids and not only from predators and criminals, but
(43:31):
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 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
(43:52):
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 (44:08):
We talked about this a little bit off air, and
I hope you don't mind me asking, but 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.
How do you not fall apart every time you tell
(44:28):
this story?
Speaker 2 (44:29):
I can tell you that 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
(44:52):
china shop when it comes 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
(45:13):
is save others from the same fate, from the same
level of suffering. And that is a promise I made
to her, and it's one I intend to keep. Are
you doing a remarkable job of what that's for sure?
Speaker 1 (45:25):
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
a young schoolgirl who looked like so many other teenagers
(45:48):
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 about what happened to Carli. What do you
see when you look at that school photo. Oh, I said,
(46:08):
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.
Speaker 2 (46:24):
You know, how lucky was I to have such an
incredible daughter to be able to know what 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,
(46:45):
she is still connected to me. I think death is physical,
you know, it's it's that love connection cannot be broken.
It's like a thread. And really that's what I hold
on to. And you know, maybe who knows, None of
(47:07):
us really know what happens 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,
has become a victim of an online crime. You know,
(47:30):
from the latest research, over three hundred and fifty million
children are exploited online every single year.
Speaker 1 (47:37):
Gosh, That's a sobering number, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (47:39):
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
(48:01):
you know, really I would say to listeners, be aware
of the apps that your children are on, how they work,
know the functionality, Talk to you 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
(48:25):
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 a lot of the time, you know, from
(48:49):
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
Friend Too. It's hashtag my friend Too, and it's a
(49:10):
platform for friends to be able 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
(49:30):
different reporting mechanisms. But you know, that's the sort of
thing that we need to offer our young people and
also to 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
(49:52):
you know, advising on 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 (50:05):
A really big thank you to s Sonia for helping
us tell both hers and Carli's story today. We know
that it is indescribably hard for a parent to relive this.
You can find links to the Carlie Ryan Foundation, the mission,
and where to donate in our show notes. True Crime
Conversations is hosted by me Claire Murphy and produced by
Charlie Blackman, with audio designed by Jacob Brown. If you
(50:27):
want to see more of our content, you can head
over to our instagram at true Crime Conversations for more details.
And if you do have a second and you got
a lot out of this episode, please leave us an Apple
podcast review or leave a comment on Spotify. Thanks so
much for listening. 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 laund room chatting to a fourteen year
old girl online. Now, that fourteen year old girl, who
(00:28):
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 teenage girl's fantasy.
(00:48):
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 uncovered, created by a nearly
fifty year old man who used that identity to lure
(01:11):
young girls into his web. One of those girls was
Carlie 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. After all, her friend had essentially vouched for him.
She already knew him. The flirtatious Brandon told Carlie all
(01:32):
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 sixth Long weekend,
but Brandon couldn't make it. He told Carlie that he
was flying back to the US for a quick visit,
(01:54):
but say his dad, Shane was keen to meet her.
Could he come instead. Carlie asked her mum Sonya, if
she could add Shane to the invite list. Despite feeling
like it was a bit strange, n You're relented, after all,
she'd met with most of her daughter's friend's parents. Newman
wasted no time after arriving at Carly's home in Sterling.
(02:15):
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. Sonia
didn't know then, but Newman had bought her fifteen year
old daughter items of sexually provocative clothing, and he was
(02:37):
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 this is True Crime Conversations, a
(03:00):
podcast exploring the world's most notorious crimes by speaking to
the people who know the most about them. What happened
to Carlie Ryan Next is every Parent's worst Nightmare. Newman
used his online persona of Shane to convince Carli to
meet with him in the South Australian coastal town of
Port Elliott, nearly an hour and a half from her home. Now,
(03:22):
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, Horseshoe Bay.
They sat in the dunes, away from any prying eyes.
Newman giving Carlie a joint to smoke. Before getting his
revenge on the fifteen year old for forcing him from
(03:44):
her birthday party, He took a rock and smashed it
into Carly'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
before she was dragged into the ocean and drowned in
(04:05):
the shallow 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
mother who will never allow her daughter's death to be
(04:27):
for nothing. Sonya Ryan joins us. Now, Sonya, thank you
so much for spending some time with us here on
True Crime Conversations. Today, we are going to talk quite
a bit about your 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
(04:50):
to you is everybody's worst nightmare, every parent's worst nightmare.
I am the mother of a ten year old daughter.
Even sometimes reading back Carli's story makes me feel anxious
and unsettled, and I I wonder how you felt in
that moment when police told you what happened to Carli,
(05:13):
because I can only imagine I would have just exploded
into a thousand pieces, never to be put back together.
How did you How did you react in that moment?
Speaker 2 (05:21):
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
(05:42):
started coming in the door, I saw one officer had
a tear running down his face, and in that moment,
I was like, what on 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
(06:03):
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
(06:23):
mean a body? And so, you know, you just go
into shock, you go into incredible shock, and every part
of you, I guess, really dissolves on the spot. You know,
you're conditioning. Layers of yourself just kind of fall away,
(06:46):
and you're left in a very raw state. And it
was kind of stepping into a horror movie. 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
(07:08):
you know, the worst possible experience that I would hope
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,
(07:29):
all I can equate it to is the power of love,
you know, that connection between myself and my daughter, and
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
(07:52):
comprehend it. So you know, the body goes into extraordinary shock,
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. Listeners. It's kind of you enter this
void and it's almost as if time stops and you're
(08:13):
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,
banging on the door at six o'clock in the morning
every morning and not being able to open the curtains
(08:35):
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,
(08:56):
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, in which I adored, but you know,
(09:19):
her brother lost her 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
(09:41):
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 would
(10:02):
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. And it's
(10:23):
not only myself, but it's the detectives working on cases
like this that suffer, that have to you know, view
terror bites 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
(10:44):
to 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
(11:05):
about years to even come to any kind of acceptance
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 because
(11:30):
there was no distractions and I had to sit with
the pain of it all. 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
(11:51):
had to sit with the pain. I had to sit
with it and feel it and 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, even though
(12:13):
it was the most horrendous journey, and it was just
you know, unbelievable waves of 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,
(12:34):
it was just you know, how do you put it
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 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
(12:55):
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 me being able to
be present, to be in the moment to you know,
again sit with that pain. And you know, it just
(13:15):
gave me this real tunnel vision focus to do everything
I could to change the online safety landscape in Australia
and beyond. 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
(13:37):
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 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
(13:57):
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 home, into their bedrooms. Like, how do
you view that creep of these social media platforms into
young people's lives when you know how dangerous it was
for your daughter to be exposed to them watching you know,
(14:19):
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 in a positive way,
(14:40):
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 and privacy, and
(15:02):
they want young people to be on their sites. You know,
they want them to be endlessly scrolling. You know, they
developed them to be addictive, 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
(15:24):
to everyone and everything at their fingertips. And I think
just people underestimate, you know, 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 the
(15:45):
e Safety Commissioner, and slowly we started to see online
safety education sort of an awareness sort of spread out
through the community. And the very first thing I wanted
to do when I incorporated Colie's legacy, the Carlie Ryan Foundation,
was to create an education program for schools was called
(16:06):
Project Connect, and so that was really important to me
to get in front of kids, but also to not
terrify them, 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.
(16:28):
It's people using them. It's the users that are using
them to harm or using them to take advantage or
to financially you know, 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
(16:48):
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.
Because if you're 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
(17:09):
these things, then you're less likely to become a victim.
And if you do become a victim, or you do
see or hearing anything online, then you know where to go,
you know where to report, you know who to come to.
You can come to the Carli Ryan Foundation Officer, the
Safety Commissioner, the ACE, the Strunning Centered Account to Child Expectation.
So we've come a long way since I've lost Carly,
(17:31):
but it has been a very rigorous journey of advising
the government on 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
(17:56):
reach an innocent child. You know, our kids are so vulnerable,
and 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
(18:17):
you know that's their focus, and it can particularly make
them vulnerable. If they have low self esteem or if
they have 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
(18:37):
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 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.
(19:00):
So the Project Connect education program has been great. It
runs nationally or a trusted is Safe 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
(19:22):
doesn't happen in our community, That won't happen to my child.
This is a horrible subject. I 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
(19:43):
shining a spotlight on this crime type and asking the
community to face this and for 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,
(20:04):
being able to access you know, really great mental health
services or whatever it may be without having to be
concerned that they're going to get a DM from some
creep or you know, being asked for nudes you know,
on an app or a messaging app or whatever.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
You're listening to True Crime Conversations with me, Claire Murphy.
I'm speaking with Sonya Ryan, the founder and CEO of
the Carli Ryan Foundation, established in memory of her daughter Carlie,
who was tragically murdered by an online predator in two
thousand and seven. Up next, Sonia tells us whether she
suspected that the person who killed her daughter was Gary
(20:41):
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
come to the realization that your daughter has actually been murdered,
did you suspect the man that had been in your
(21:05):
home you'd met Carl's killer in the weeks beforehand. Did
you have your suspicions back then that he might be responsible?
Speaker 2 (21:13):
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 Carly. It was coming
up to her birthday and everybody was there, and you know,
(21:36):
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
(21:56):
we now know that he was operating the profile of
the so called teenage boy which he claimed to be
his son, which was 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, basically said you need
(22:19):
to leave this house. I guess as soon as police
came in. There was nobody else. I mean, Carlie, 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. There was no one else. It
(22:40):
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 him
(23:03):
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, he portrayed himself
(23:26):
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. You know,
(23:47):
I really want you to meet him, mom. You know,
he's a really nice guy.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
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.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
Them, and just completely oblivious because you know, we do
actually have a we ten 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,
(24:20):
well 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
(24:43):
child's parents 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. Does
that make sense?
Speaker 1 (25:00):
Yeah, it's not the thing that we're led to first
believe of the people we meet, right.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
No, and you always I 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 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, we
(25:24):
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,
(25:49):
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 over night thing,
you know, he checking in, how's your homework going, how's
(26:11):
your mom, how's 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,
But back then perhaps no idea. All I saw was
a boy at a computer, typing in our kitchen to
her on chat.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
You know.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
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,
(26:51):
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,
you know. And 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,
(27:14):
you're dealing with a 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. 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
(27:36):
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 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
(27:59):
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, doing everything we can to
protect the community because far too often, and you would
have seen this through the work that you do. I mean,
how many times does somebody offend against someone In the
next minute they're out on the street again and then reoffending.
(28:23):
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. Well, you.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
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
(28:56):
did it make you feel when this finally gets to
court and he pleads not guilty.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
Oh, it's just ridiculous. And do you know what? 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.
(29:22):
I just had this I don't know, the 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
(29:43):
was when 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
(30:05):
solutions 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
(30:26):
my daughter, 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
(30:50):
in 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 history of abusing women, so you know,
(31:11):
and that's also too thinking about the 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
(31:33):
often I think two people think that people like this
can potentially be rehabilitated, only managed.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
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. Oh.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
Absolutely, absolutely, Yeah, I've never seen somebody so vile, you know,
and just so vindictive and just I mean, I don't
know what happened to him, you know, through his life,
(32:20):
but to become so vicious towards women and girls, you know,
I guess again, people like you and I can 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,
(32:42):
we were part of a devising on the Release on
licensed 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 (32:55):
Next, Sonya tells us when she decided to establish the
Karlie Ryan Foundation in memory of her daughter. So talk
to me about the Carlie Ryan Foundation. Where do you
find yourself in that aftermath well of grief that you
were talking about. At what point do you think I
(33:17):
need I need to make this purposeful.
Speaker 2 (33:21):
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
(33:44):
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
(34:08):
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
(34:29):
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
(34:50):
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? How could we
fill those gaps? 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
(35:13):
to be just totally freaked out and not letting their
kids access educational material or you know, speak to their
family overseas or 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
(35:33):
in schools really quickly. And because I was there as
her mother, of course that creative connection with students. So students, well,
Carli could have been my sister, she could have been
my friend. The young boys would get really protective of
the girls, and you know, I didn't want to become
Carlie's advocates. And so there was this real movement, you know,
(35:58):
and it was really quite amazing. And what happened and
what we didn't expect to happen right at the beginning
was you know, 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.
(36:19):
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 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
(36:40):
disclosure forms, and you know, helping schools connected, you know,
adequate mandatory reporting resources, and you know, it just really
just took off. 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
(37:03):
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 nosy and trying to
stop me having 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 really kids
(37:25):
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 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
(37:46):
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 out and we're booked out constantly months
in advance, which is fantastic. And you know, really from
(38:07):
there then became the legislative work, and that's where I
authored Carly's Law.
Speaker 1 (38:12):
Can you talk us through Carl's Law and tell us
how it's worked since it's passed.
Speaker 2 (38:17):
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 two thousand and seventeen is little broader.
The state version of South Australia stricter, which includes preparation
to meet. So essentially it helps police to arrest in
(38:40):
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
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
(39:02):
they're able to lay additional charges on top of Carli's
Law and the Australian place that essentially it's been like gateway law.
It gets them in the door. They'll get in the
door often then they'll find terrorbots of child abuse material
on computers or other evidence, and then they can lay
additional charges. But they have stopped, they've prevented the meeting.
(39:23):
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 than reactive. And so
the UN contacted me and talked to me about getting
(39:43):
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. So
I just went to the Minister for Home Affairs and said,
(40:03):
let me out of the country. I can work to do.
So I just shut off to America and the rest
is history.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
As we might add, Sonya has actually just returned 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 yours. Yes, if I look a bit rough
at that'd been, I know that this has taken you
far and wide, and you've achieved so much in the
(40:31):
past few years.
Speaker 2 (40:32):
But how does.
Speaker 1 (40:34):
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 2 (40:51):
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
(41:11):
be okay. He and Carli 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 live. You need to live for her and
make her proud and show her who you are and
(41:33):
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
(41:56):
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 his ability
to strive in the worst of circumstances. Really, and so,
you know, I think again coming back to that connection
(42:21):
between us, 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
(42:43):
terribly it cannot be for nothing. And really for me,
it's about, you know, I've got limited time. What am
I able to do? You know, And yes we've done
a lot, but there's still a lot to do. You know.
We've passed legislation. I'm on a number of global working
groups and a bunch here in Australia advising government. You know,
(43:07):
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 global response to the inappropriate nature of a
lot of platforms and you know, how we can protect
our kids and not only from predators and criminals, but
(43:31):
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 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
(43:52):
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 (44:08):
We talked about this a little bit off air, and
I hope you don't mind me asking, but 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.
How do you not fall apart every time you tell
(44:28):
this story?
Speaker 2 (44:29):
I can tell you that 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
(44:52):
china shop when it comes 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
(45:13):
is save others from the same fate, from the same
level of suffering. And that is a promise I made
to her, and it's one I intend to keep. Are
you doing a remarkable job of what that's for sure?
Speaker 1 (45:25):
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
a young schoolgirl who looked like so many other teenagers
(45:48):
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 about what happened to Carli. What do you
see when you look at that school photo. Oh, I said,
(46:08):
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.
Speaker 2 (46:24):
You know, how lucky was I to have such an
incredible daughter to be able to know what 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,
(46:45):
she is still connected to me. I think death is physical,
you know, it's it's that love connection cannot be broken.
It's like a thread. And really that's what I hold
on to. And you know, maybe who knows, None of
(47:07):
us really know what happens 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,
has become a victim of an online crime. You know,
(47:30):
from the latest research, over three hundred and fifty million
children are exploited online every single year.
Speaker 1 (47:37):
Gosh, That's a sobering number, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (47:39):
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
(48:01):
you know, really I would say to listeners, be aware
of the apps that your children are on, how they work,
know the functionality, Talk to you 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
(48:25):
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 a lot of the time, you know, from
(48:49):
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
Friend Too. It's hashtag my friend Too, and it's a
(49:10):
platform for friends to be able 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
(49:30):
different reporting mechanisms. But you know, that's the sort of
thing that we need to offer our young people and
also to 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
(49:52):
you know, advising on 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 (50:05):
A really big thank you to s Sonia for helping
us tell both hers and Carli's story today. We know
that it is indescribably hard for a parent to relive this.
You can find links to the Carlie Ryan Foundation, the mission,
and where to donate in our show notes. True Crime
Conversations is hosted by me Claire Murphy and produced by
Charlie Blackman, with audio designed by Jacob Brown. If you
(50:27):
want to see more of our content, you can head
over to our instagram at true Crime Conversations for more details.
And if you do have a second and you got
a lot out of this episode, please leave us an Apple
podcast review or leave a comment on Spotify. Thanks so
much for listening. I'll be back next week with another
True Crime Conversation.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist
It’s 1996 in rural North Carolina, and an oddball crew makes history when they pull off America’s third largest cash heist. But it’s all downhill from there. Join host Johnny Knoxville as he unspools a wild and woolly tale about a group of regular ‘ol folks who risked it all for a chance at a better life. CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist answers the question: what would you do with 17.3 million dollars? The answer includes diamond rings, mansions, velvet Elvis paintings, plus a run for the border, murder-for-hire-plots, and FBI busts.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com