I walked into a room with a curtain
and they said to me "Are you ready?"
and they pulled the curtain back
and there was my daughter.
Her fists were clenched,
her jaw was clenched,
she was beaten.
She suffered terribly
at the hands of a monster with no remorse.
Where does that leave me as her mother?
That leaves me in a position to either die
or find the strength somewhere from within to fight.
Fight not only for Carly
but fight for every single young person
that is online trying to make connections.
I believe that this is what Carly would want me to do.
My name's Sonia Ryan.
I'm the founder of the Carly Ryan Foundation.
So we promote online safety nationally.
The idea behind Carly's law is to prevent suffering
so we want to give more power to the police
to be able to detain a potentially dangerous criminal
before they harm a child.
In your experience as a police officer
do you think there were circumstances when the police could not act
because it fell short of proving that element of sexual intent.
Yes, I do. Clearly, what you've pointed out is a deficiency in law.
It's the earliest possible intervention
in a scenario that could ultimately end in tragedy
and I think that's the Carly Ryan story.
Carly was a real light.
She was really kind and trusting and loving.
Unfortunately, I believe that it's those very qualities
that Gary Newman used to lure my daughter.
Carly was super excited that she'd met this boy online
and I would look over her shoulder
and she'd be having pretty normal conversations
about life and school.
This happened for quite some time
over an 18-month period
and I just believed that Brandon was just another one of her friends
and then one day she came to me and said
"Mum, I think I've got feelings for this boy, I really like him
"and I'd love for you to meet his dad."
And so I spoke to who I thought was Brandon's father
on the telephone.
Sounded like a normal man, told me he was a security guard,
said he was coming through South Australia,
would like to drop some presents off for her birthday.
And I met Gary Newman posing as Brandon's father, Shane.
He showed me a security licence with all fake details,
he was wearing a security shirt with a fake embroidered emblem.
He went to so much trouble to deceive us,
nothing could have prepared myself or Carly for a criminal like this.
Little did we know he was writing 200 fake profiles
of young men online to lure girls.
So Gary Newman was actually Brandon.
He came to visit.
He didn't sit near Carly, he didn't do anything inappropriate.
It wasn't until the last day of his visit
that he looked at Carly in a certain way
and it gave me the shivers.
And I thought "Oh no, something's wrong."
And, you know, I kicked him out of the house
and I said "If you come back or try to talk to Carly,
"I will contact police."
I took her mobile phone from her, I cut the internet off.
Little did I know that he had access to our home line
so while I was at work he was calling Carly.
And I believe that he had already been able to establish
that real trust with her.
She believed that Brandon was real.
She believed that Brandon loved her
and little did I know that Gary Newman
was planning to come back to Adelaide
to, in his words, fix her up.
So on February 19th, 2007,
Carly came to me all dressed up
and said "Mum, I'm going to go and meet my friends in the city.
"We're going to hang out, we're going to go back to my friend's house,
"is it all right if I stay there overnight?"
So it was nothing out of the ordinary
and she skipped off the verandah and she said "Love you, Mum!"
And little did I know, that would be the very last time
I'd see my daughter.
Carly's body was found that morning at 6 a.m.
in the shallows at Port Elliot.
Carly Ryan's 48-year-old alleged killer is taken into custody.
Carly's killer was found guilty of her murder
and sentenced to life in prison.
When everything happened to Carly
it was like being pulled into some kind of black abyss
that Gary Newman had created.
I can't sit in that space because it's sitting in her suffering
and it would just dissolve my soul.
I think what people don't realise is the trauma,
and I wouldn't want them to realise.
Unfortunately, these crimes continue to happen
and there's more and more people being arrested
for trying to procure children.
Rapidly changing technologies and the anonymity of the internet
have resulted in unprecedented opportunities
for child sex offenders.
Through the work that we do, we get a lot of contact from kids
who believe they're speaking to who they believe is a friend online
or a potential boyfriend or girlfriend.
He said he was seventeen,
he said he was from California,
so he just kind of talked to me really nice,
and he asked me to meet him a couple of times.
Two months after I started talking to him
I get a message from the police saying basically
he wasn't who he said he was,
he was a 57-year-old man
and you should be more careful online.
I might have gone to meet him and it makes me feel terrible now
because something could have happened to me.
So currently, it's not against the law to do that to a child.
If Carly's law was implemented, then it would be against the law.
That person, if they're careful in their communications with a child,
would not have committed an offence.
Well, I introduced this law in the Senate a couple of years ago
because the current law is really inadequate,
there are lots of predators out there
who lie about their age to a child and then try and meet them
and right now the police can't do anything about it
because they can't prove a sexual purpose.
The department does not support the proposed bill.
I was really quite surprised at the lack of traction it received.
We also need to contemplate the full range of circumstances.
On the face of it, that would be an offence.
It was cast too broadly in the sense that
it would drag in conduct that was not actually criminal
and that is the reason why it was knocked back.
Some of the objections were to do with what if a disabled person
didn't know what they were doing
and tried to make contact with a minor.
Now of course it's up to the discretion of the authorities.
You must take great care to ensure that it targets
the harm that you want to target.
I've spoken to different police who have said
"You know what, this could make a real difference.
"We could end up apprehending somebody, seizing their computer,
"being able to take DNA before they harm a child."
The police always want more powers.
They may have the best intentions
but if you give greatly enlarged powers
to police officers and law enforcement,
there are going to be unintended consequences of that too.
Some of the concerns were fair enough
in terms of how it would work at a technical level,
but ultimately, the law needs to change
because there's currently a massive loophole in it.
How's that petition going?
It's going really, really well.
We've got some really fantastic comments.
So I started the change.org petition.
I wanted to see what the Australian community thought about Carly's law
and if it was important.
We have now nearly 60,000 signatures
and so many comments of support.
"My 15-year-old daughter was groomed online by a man 20 years older
"and the law wouldn't help me."
If there is a petition with a very large number of signatures,
that raises the issue for the politicians,
but it remains the politicians' responsibility
to make laws responsibly.
Well, we're going to try again.
The Senate comes back on 30th August
and in that very first sitting week
we're going to push it really hard.
I don't talk about what happened to my daughter for nothing.
I do this because I believe in the protection of our children.
I can't imagine what Sonia went through.
It would be every parent's worst nightmare.
You need to change the law. It's as simple as that.