Transcript — Keeping kids safe online
Elena Marchetti, Acting Chair, Queensland Sentencing Advisory Council
Hello and welcome to this edition of Sentencing Matters, a podcast from the Queensland Sentencing Advisory Council.
Elena Marchetti:
I'm Elena Marchetti, the Acting Chair of Queensland Sentencing Advisory Council. In this edition I'm talking to Sonya Ryan, the Founder and CEO of the Carly Ryan Foundation. The foundation was founded following the tragic death of her 15-year-old daughter, Carly Ryan in February 2007 at the hands of an online predator and paedophile. The foundation is a not for profit charity created to promote the safety of children online. Led by Carly's mum Sonya, the foundation supports families and the community through education, counselling, engagement, promotion, and political advocacy. Sonya, thank you for your time today and for joining us. We know you're incredibly busy running the Foundation.
Sonya Ryan, Founder, Carly Ryan Foundation
Thank you for having me.
Elena Marchetti:
Firstly, I'd like to offer our congratulations actually following the introduction of Carly's Law early in 2017. This must be a very proud achievement for you and your team, and obviously a big step forward for protecting young people online.
Sonya Ryan:
It was a lot of hard work and really trying to get the government to understand that we were trying to prevent harm. We were really trying to give police the power to intervene sooner before a child is offended against. Once you have a victim of crime, then we have a lifetime of incredible suffering. That's really what we wanted to try and avoid, and the motivation behind the creation of the legislation.
Elena Marchetti:
We'll talk about the legislation, or what it's known as Carly's Law, a little bit more in a moment, but I was wondering if before we do if you could first of all talk about and introduce our listeners to Carly and her story, and also the work of the Foundation, which has been established in her name.
Sonya Ryan:
Sure. Carly is my daughter. She was your typical outgoing, loving, beautiful teenager trying to connect with friends and trying to establish her own relationships. When all of the kids were young, they all got on MSN and thought it was the best thing ever that they could talk to each other after school. They were all looking for opportunity. They were all looking for friendships and to fit in. Carly saw a profile of a young boy who really caught her attention. He began speaking to not only Carly, but to her friends as well. This went on for months and months of this constant communication online in our kitchen via the computer. They would talk about everything from homework to music, to their lives. As time went on, I could see that Carly seemed to be really falling for this profile of this Brandon...
Elena Marchetti:
But you were aware?
Sonya Ryan:
Yes.
Elena Marchetti:
Yeah, wow.
Sonya Ryan:
So her friends had, one of her best friends had started a relationship with a boy called Aiden. They were all in the music scene. They all really loved the same things. I think Carly kind of looked at her friends and wanted something similar. At 15 or 14 wanting to connect with other people and wanting to find herself. They talked about everything from school to, as I said music, things that they had in common. This went on for a long time. I mean they were talking to each other for 18 months.
Elena Marchetti:
Did he say that he lived in the area or...
Sonya Ryan:
He said that he lived in Melbourne.
Elena Marchetti:
Okay.
Sonya Ryan:
He said that he was a musician and that he lived with his dad. As time went on, I would look over her shoulder at them having conversations and I saw a boy typing. He was talking to her other friends as well. Over time, he slowly established this friendship with my daughter. We all thought that this was a young boy who lived in Melbourne who was just into music and pretty normal, and not really any different to any of the other connections she had with other friends, and friends of friends through school because they all would talk to each other from various different schools and may not necessarily have seen each other. But you've got to remember this was 2005, 2006, and the social aspect of the internet was kind of in its infancy. We had My Space, MSN, and it was all this new way of communicating and it was exciting.
We were really not thinking about the fact that there could be criminals in this space using this platform to try to infiltrate the lives of children. Little did we know that whom Carly was speaking to was actually a 50-year-old paedophile and predator who was posing as a young Brandon, a young boy. But he was also operating up to 200 fake profiles online to try and access the lives of young girls. He created many different profiles to back his story.
Elena Marchetti:
Yeah, and it's just, what strikes me is the amount of time a person invests in, I guess, grooming these kids.
Sonya Ryan:
Yeah. I think when you come from a normal family, my father is Italian...
Elena Marchetti:
So is mine.
Sonya Ryan:
You come from a very loving family, you grow up and you're kind to people. You want to be welcoming and non-judgmental. Because you've established this way of being that's been handed down to you from your parents, you don't sit and think that anybody could be really any different when you haven't been exposed to somebody like this before. Of course, we were completely naïve and I had no idea that the person at the other end of the computer was operating many different profiles to try and access young girls. Carly thought she was talking to this Brandon boy when in fact he was just talking like a teenager. He was saying all the right things to her trying to counsel her and tell her to keep up with homework, and trying to appear that he cared and adored her when in actual fact he was trying to infiltrate her life.
Over time, it came to a point when Carly had her birthday and I spoke to whom I thought was Brandon's father on the telephone and he said he was coming through where we lived and he'd love to drop some presents off for Carly. I actually met this man posing as Brandon's father, but of course Brandon was never real. He presented a security licence. He met our entire family. He really presented himself like a dad, just like any other member of the community. Our entire family met him and were none the wiser. He just made up excuses. Brandon had another accomplice that spoke on the phone and pretended to be this Brandon character. He went to a lot of trouble to try and access Carly. It wasn't until the day of her party that I kind of got this instinct, this mother's instinct. I think anyone listening can probably relate to this.
Something didn't feel right because he was quite involved in what his son was doing with my daughter, and what they were speaking about online. I started to see conversations with Brandon, his father, and Carly all together. I thought well this is a bit odd. Why is the father so interested in what the kids are speaking about? It just didn't seem right. I said to Carly look there's something not right here. There's something wrong.
Elena Marchetti:
Sonya, can I ask you were there fewer telephone conversations between Carly and this boy as opposed to just the online chat?
Sonya Ryan:
Yes, there was telephone calls. He had an accomplice that...
Elena Marchetti:
Isn't that interesting.
Sonya Ryan:
He used another person to be the voice of Brandon.
Elena Marchetti:
But that was more in the minority was it? Most contact was via the MSN chat.
Sonya Ryan:
Yes. All online because he was operating fake profiles.
Elena Marchetti:
Well of course.
Sonya Ryan:
Yeah. He was trying to establish the identity of this boy named Brandon so he was using other profiles to say things like, "Oh yeah I know Brandon. I met him at this show." He used other profiles to try and back him up and fill the life of this boy who never existed. Of course, we were no match for this kind of depravity and criminal behaviour. You couldn't even imagine in your worst nightmare that somebody could be operating so many fake profiles for so long. I mean he must have spent most of his day and night fabricating these identities...
Elena Marchetti:
That's right.
Sonya Ryan:
...to little children. Now I banned Carly from talking to the supposed father, and said that I was quite concerned. I took her mobile phone from her, I cut the internet off, but little did I know that he already had access. He gave her phone credit, and she'd given him the home line number. When I was at work, he was calling in pretending to be Brandon and organising to meet with her. Unfortunately Carly, I believe that she thought she was going to meet Brandon, this boy that she'd spent all this time building a relationship with, building a friendship with, and in her mind believed completely and absolutely adored her. She truly believed that she was going to go and meet this boy.
They were able to convince her to go and meet them without telling me. She left on the afternoon of February 19, 2007, and told me that she was going to see her friend. She did and they would catch the bus together, and they would sleep over a friend's house. I arranged with the parents as we normally did, but of course she never turned up. Then we put out a missing persons report and she was found the next morning on the beach at Port Elliott in South Australia. He had come from Victoria specifically to meet with Carly. I believe that when she didn't go along with his attempts to sexually assault her that he murdered her.
Elena Marchetti:
Was that...
Sonya Ryan:
He took her whole life from her.
Elena Marchetti:
Absolutely. Of course.
Sonya Ryan:
Through that, straight away, I just knew this would have to have something to do with the people she was talking with online because everyone else in our life, we've never had any terrible experiences with people. As I said, we just had good friendships and good family around, good family connections. There was no reason for anybody to hurt her or to do anything to harm her. I gave all the evidence across to police and very quickly they were able to establish that there was no such person as Brandon, that Gary Newman had created this fictitious profile to lure Carly and a whole range of other profiles as well. He spent a lot of time. When they arrested him for murdering Carly 11 days after she was found, when they entered his house they found drawers full of books filled with fake profile names, fake passwords. He was logged on as Brandon talking to a 14 year old girl in Perth.
Elena Marchetti:
Ah geez.
Sonya Ryan:
He was obviously going to continue what he was doing. It was just, it was as if we entered a nightmare. It truly was. It was as if not only did I have to identify my child and see her like that, but on top of that with all of this horrific evidence, that this person that you've wondered god how does somebody become like this. How can somebody hurt a child so viciously and to be so cruel to take someone's life from them.
Elena Marchetti:
I can't imagine Sonya.
Sonya Ryan:
You're just left in this utter shock. I think I was in shock for about four years to be honest. I was in absolutely terrible trauma. Through the investigation and trial, as I was listening to the evidence, I just got it. In that grief, in that terrible grief, I had a sense of clarity. I just knew, oh gosh he cannot be the only person using the internet to try and infiltrate the lives of innocent beautiful kids who are just loving and trusting, and open, and wanting to share their lives. I have to do something. When you go through that level of suffering, it rocks you to your very core and you genuinely don't want to see anyone ever have to be faced with that in the future.
We sat down and I thought gosh what can we do? How can we empower kids? How can we protect them online? What are some of the things we can do? Part of that was establishing the Carly Ryan Foundation and registering it as a harm prevention charity, and really to offer online support and look at opportunities versus risk. Obviously educating about online awareness, cyber bullying, identify theft, sexting, online grooming, criminal behaviours, managing self-resilience, critical thinking, protective behaviours, respectful relationships. Really trying to engage not only with students, but with parents as well. Parents, we're all from a different generation where we're not brought up with the internet. It's just vital that we need to close that generation gap and empower parents with as much practical information as we can give them to be able to help their children navigate this space.
That was the beginning of the work of the foundation. It was so successful because Carly provided the connections. Here I am, I'm her mother standing in front of these kids saying, "This is my experience. Now I know what happened to Carly is the worst possible thing that can happen, but understand that there are people online that may try and take advantage of you in a negative way. What can we do reduce the risk of that happening to somebody, either yourself or somebody that you love or care about?" The students would just be so engaged and would just participate, and would take so much from the sessions that really, as we began to grow, it just really unfolded and just began to really build and very quickly because of that connection that I'm able to gain with young people and families. I feel very lucky that I'm able to gain that connection, and really Carly provides that connection.
Elena Marchetti:
Yeah, I think young people and their parents are very lucky to have you having established this foundation, and having that passion to do something like that. I can imagine what you say to young people must really resonate with them because a lot of them might be sitting there questioning maybe their own contacts that they've got online. It would certainly...
Sonya Ryan:
We get disclosures immediately after every… whether it's cyber bullying, or I've met somebody, or how do I determine whether they really are who they say they are, give them the confidence I think to step forward. But understanding that there are opportunities online, and that's not to be fearful of those opportunities but to be searching out backgrounds. Don't just take people's word for it. Do your checks and look at the potential risks, and then making sure all the while we're putting our own safety and the safety of our family first. For me to be standing there saying there is nothing wrong with the online space. It's a wonderful way to connect. It's a wonderful source of information. People are looking at me and my daughter has been murdered by an online predator and they're saying, "Oh gosh, if she's saying that we can do this and we can really do this. We really can embrace this space."
Elena Marchetti:
What are some of the tools that you suggest, say young people and then also their parents, can use? Are they different approaches for the two? Do you say right if you're a young person who's online here's some things that you can check out, and if you're a parent here's what you can do?
Sonya Ryan:
Look a lot of this is around communication and connection. Really what we provide is connections for families. Getting young people to understand that parents asking questions about what they're doing online because they're motivated by love for their kids. It's not wanting to be nosy. That kids are being given the privilege of an internet that's paid for them. They're given devices. Just as we have a driver's licence to drive a car we need to be mindful of how we drive on the road, we also need to be mindful of how we're connecting online. We really provide guidelines for the young people to follow to keep themselves and their families safe, but also talking about their choices and how their choices affect their own happiness. Once they really understand that and get that, then they're really open to some of our suggestions, so managing themselves. We talk about emotional intelligence, how our emotions can affect our judgments and our choices, and our connections with others as well.
There's a lot of different layers of information, but parents coming to our sessions and they're so frozen in fear and don't know how to manage this with their kids. What we try and do is reduce that fear and give them as much information as we can factually from every different app and gaming platform setting so that we can set everything up correctly so then our kids can go on and game, and connect, and speak to their friends. We really again do reduce the risk of them being targeted inappropriate in any way. That could be anything. It's not just online grooming. We have identity theft, scams, bullying. There's so many different things that our young people can be subjected to in this space. I think they also need to be empowered to support each other. Speak up if they see somebody being bullied, or come across something. That they can support each other as well and they have the ability to find their voice and stand up for their friend and speak out, and be able to connect to the right place for support.
We really want to give that practical advice and be able to give them links to good support services that can actually help them. Really re-establish happiness in this space because there's some great connections made via the online space.
Elena Marchetti:
Yeah. I think there's a lot of adults as well who could be a lot more informed by the connections they're making as well on that online platform.
Sonya Ryan:
Criminals are going to dating sites now.
Elena Marchetti:
Exactly.
Sonya Ryan:
Look for people with children to be able to target their kids. They're not interested in dating the person, they're trying to access their children.
Elena Marchetti:
That's true.
Sonya Ryan:
There's lots of different ways. I mean if you just think all of the things that we grew up have just moved to the online space.
Elena Marchetti:
That's right.
Sonya Ryan:
All of our insecurities, all of the things that we went through as teenagers, all of those things have moved to that online space. As well as stranger danger we had on the street, any kind of criminal activities moved to that online space as well. Just being empowered with knowledge of that, and then being able to be supported. That's what we really are. We are a support service for the community. We want to empower whole communities with great information to be able to set them up for a positive experience online, and to genuinely make sure that we reduce the risk of anything like that kind of suffering that happened to Carly happening to another young innocent person.
Elena Marchetti:
We became aware of your foundation, you might know this, through our work on our first terms of reference, which was on the classification of child exploitation material for sentencing purposes. I guess we came across the Carly Ryan Foundation and how it promotes that online safety for young people. We were also aware of your push to have Carly's Law enacted. I was wondering if you could just outline what Carly's Law is about, and how it does help improve the safety of young people online?
Sonya Ryan:
The only other law that exists like Carly's Law is antiterrorism law. The idea behind Carly's Law is any acts done in preparation for or planning to cause harm to or engage in sexual activity with a minor. The grooming laws that existed at the time, the police couldn't do anything until an offender had acted.
Elena Marchetti:
Right.
Sonya Ryan:
This often meant that we had a child that was a victim of crime. When we were negotiating the legislation, I said there has to be a way of giving police more power to be able to intervene sooner so that they can arrest somebody. Often when they arrest somebody that's potentially planning or doing an act in preparation to harm a child, generally they may have other evidence within a home, whether that be child exploitation material on computers, there's generally other evidence determined through that investigation. We're trying to prevent the harm and suffering of children. We're trying to give the police power to go in and pluck that child out of danger before they become a victim of that criminal. The purposes include, acts done in preparation or planning, includes a defendant misrepresenting his or her age online.
Elena Marchetti:
Wow.
Sonya Ryan:
Of course, this is what Gary Newman did. He misrepresented his age, his identity, and the result of that was catastrophic.
Elena Marchetti:
Yeah. It's surprises me that this wasn't available for police prior because it's just common sense that a person who's engaging in that...
Sonya Ryan:
Well it took me quite a while to get the Senate to say, to get the government to understand the purpose behind the law was to prevent suffering. Because it's federal law, Commonwealth law, police can use it in any commonwealth country, which includes places like Cambodia.
Elena Marchetti:
Right.
Sonya Ryan:
When detectives go in and find children being used in the sex industry to create child exploitation material, they can get them out of that situation before they're harmed. Prior to that they had to wait for the actual act.
Elena Marchetti:
Yeah.
Sonya Ryan:
That to me, I know the devastation that child abuse causes and this kind of behaviour to victims. Of course, Carly suffered and lost her life, but there are lots of young victims that if they survive their criminal act they go on to have a life filled with incredible suffering, and trying to negotiate life and relationships.
Elena Marchetti:
Absolutely.
Sonya Ryan:
It completely destroys their entire life. Even victims that are now in their 60s that support the foundation, they still to this day have terrible challenges around what happened to them. The suffering it causes, is just, it's really soul crushing. It's terrible. You just really want to do all that you can to try and prevent this from happening. I'm one person, but imagine if we all were able to make a change in this space to protect children. I mean my dream is that we have a country who basically has zero tolerance for any crimes against children.
Elena Marchetti:
Yeah exactly. One of the other things that I wanted to ask you about, that's something that occurs between actual children rather than say an impersonator who is pretending to be a child and then a child. It has to do with the transfer of self-generated images between young people, and of course how this has the potential of escalating into image-based abuse. I understand that your education programme covers this issue. Do you think that, I guess, this next generation is aware of the risks of image-based abuse, and are you finding they're receptive to the messages you're trying to impart?
Sonya Ryan:
They are because quite simply we need to talk about how their choices affect their own happiness and their own future, their own opportunity. Yes they want to share their sexuality, and yes we are communicating a very different way to when we did 20 years ago, but how can we do that safely. Well the answer to that is you really can't because once you hand over that kind of image to anybody, even if you trust them, relationships change, friendships change, and you are basically handing over control of your happiness to another person.
Elena Marchetti:
Yeah.
Sonya Ryan:
Once we speak to young people about this, and then of course the law surrounding sharing nude or semi-nude images of anyone under the age of 18 being produced in child pornography materials, most of the young people we speak to just are shocked and just believe that everyone sending sexting images or image-based abuse images, that this is the norm. When in actual fact, that's not true at all. There are lots being sent, but not at the level that a lot of young people think, that it's just socially accepted and that everybody does it. We try and give them alternatives to sending those kind of images to each other, and really again empowering them to look at the different layers and the different reasons why somebody might want something like this. There's a lot of different education throughout our programme around this, but again it's come back to an individual's choice.
Elena Marchetti:
It does.
Sonya Ryan:
And what it means for their life. That's the heart of the matter really. We want to get to the reasons why young people are sending, why they feel they need to send those, and what that actually means when they let go of that very personal image and hand it to somebody else to take care of basically. Not everybody takes care of those images if they're prepared to share them.
Elena Marchetti:
Yeah.
Sonya Ryan:
Which then causes a whole lot of other issues.
Elena Marchetti:
Exactly. It is such a different, I don't know, world or space out there now.
Sonya Ryan:
It really is.
Elena Marchetti:
It really is.
Sonya Ryan:
You have to think as adults would I be prepared to send my husband, as an adult, a nude image via a device. Well no I wouldn't be because I would feel that what happened if he decided to put that somewhere, or somebody saw it, or somebody found it.
Elena Marchetti:
That's right.
Sonya Ryan:
I just wouldn't feel comfortable in sharing that because I wouldn't want to give any opportunity for somebody to take advantage of me in a negative way.
Elena Marchetti:
That's right. It's just that I think as adults we have a, maybe not all adults but a lot of adults have a better understanding of the fact that if images end up on the internet it's very difficult to have it removed. In fact, you can't have it removed because there's always some sort of replication, or there's always a way of saving that image.
Sonya Ryan:
Distributing it.
Elena Marchetti:
Yeah, exactly. I think we have a better understanding of that possibly than obviously young people.
Sonya Ryan:
And I think you're right. Young people are so in the moment, and just sharing as they're experiencing, and they're not always stopping and thinking about what they're sending and the potential consequences of sending, whether it be bullying somebody or sending some kind of image, or making a comment on somebody's Instagram, or whatever it might be sometimes. If they're in the moment they make the call and they don't often think about how it can affect their happiness or the happiness of other people.
Elena Marchetti:
That's right. One of the other things that I wanted to touch on has to do with the new terms of reference that's been given to us by the Queensland Attorney General. That's to do with sentencing for child homicide offences. It's a 12 month review, and it focuses on sentencing for offences involving the unlawful death of a child. We'll include an analysis of sentencing trends and practices, and also current laws and penalties are imposed for that type of sentencing in Queensland. In relation to Carly, the man who took her life received a life sentence with a non-parole period of 29 years. I just wanted to ask you what's the one thing that you believe should be taken into account when these offenders are sentenced for homicides, or murders, or manslaughters? I guess particularly murders for crimes against children.
Sonya Ryan:
I think the maximum penalty should be put into effect because...
Elena Marchetti:
Just through the work that we’re about to start. I’m meeting with Minister Keenan around the inadequacies of sentencing for serious child sex offenders and the fact that we're seeing this really inadequate times, if any, or suspended sentences for serious crimes against children. That's something that we want to address, but as far as if somebody chooses to murder a child, that the maximum penalty should be enforced.
Elena Marchetti:
Is there a particular aspect of what they do that should be particularly focused on in making that determination?
Sonya Ryan:
The fact is that a child is innocent...
Elena Marchetti:
They are.
Sonya Ryan:
And they are looking to an adult for guidance, love, care, protection. When that adult makes a decision to harm an innocent child, I, myself, I cannot think of really a worse offence because all they're looking for is care and love from an adult. There are no excuses in my mind to have any kind of motivation to harm a child like that. If there is something going on and you are having a tendency to want to harm, then one would think that you would do everything in your power to get some help and try and determine what's going on mentally and what can be done, if anything, to help prevent somebody taking that action.
Elena Marchetti:
I guess the focus is that vulnerability of that child in relation to having groomed them or made them believe something that's really not reality. It is, it's preying on vulnerability really, isn't it?
Sonya Ryan:
It is.
Elena Marchetti:
Yeah.
Sonya Ryan:
It's almost like an animal abuser. You have somebody who abuses animals. Now an animal all they want, a dog or your family pet, all they want is to be loved and cared for. They're loyal, they look to you for everything, and they just love you. That's all they do. A young person or a child, they just want to be loved, nurtured, cared for, given opportunity, learning, growing. When an adult makes a conscious decision to harm a vulnerable innocent person, and to me it's all about control, controlling something that is unable to speak up for themselves, or unable to stand up for themselves, whether it be the facts of their age, their size, whatever it may be. I think that's beyond appalling and that it should carry an absolutely maximum sentence for that kind of criminal act. Remembering here that is taking the life of a young child, a life that was given to them. Their potential future could have been anything. To strip that from an innocent young person is, I think, the lowest of the low.
Elena Marchetti:
You've given us so much to think about Sonya. Can I ask you, and I imagine there will be quite a few listeners who will want to know this, but where do people go to find out more about the Carly Ryan Foundation?
Sonya Ryan:
If you just go to carlyryanfoundation.com and you can visit our website. Again, we're here to help. We're here to provide practical advice, information on different apps and gaming platforms, and to support. We really truly believe that every young person has the right to go online and have positive experiences. Again, we just want to do everything we can to reduce the risk of somebody suffering in this space. We will continue to do what we can to make sure that we're preventing crime and preventing harm.
Elena Marchetti:
Sonya I just am in awe of what you do and the work you've done. Particularly the fact that you have been through such a terrible ordeal and experience yourself and then to do something like this and give back so much is just truly inspiring. Thank you so much for joining me today to share Carly's story, and also share the work that you do, and talk about the Carly Ryan Foundation.
I hope the listeners today have found this edition of Sentencing Matters informative and that you've heard some information that can assist you. If you would like more information on sentencing issues in Queensland, you can head to our website, which is sentencingcouncil.qld.gov.au. Thank you so much for listening, and thank you Sonya.
Sonya Ryan:
Thank you.