'I'LL NEVER STOP FIGHTING FOR CARLY'

SA mum Sonya is honouring her murdered daughter by protecting children from online predators

Sonya Ryan’s heart broke when a cyber predator stalked and seduced her daughter Carly before bashing her and throwing her into the sea to drown.

“I wondered if it would just stop beating,” says the devastated mum.

Now, 12 years after Carly became the first Australian child to be murdered by an online predator, Sonya is globally recognised as a leader in the fight to protect children online.

It’s a remarkable turnaround for the 48-year-old.

Sonya’s world started to unravel when Carly met an 18-year-old Victorian musician, Brandon Kane, online. She remembers how her daughter told her how much she liked him.

But things took a sinister turn as Carly’s 15th birthday approached in 2007. Brandon’s father Shane called to say he was coming to Adelaide and he wanted to drop off some presents for Carly. He arrived on day of her party.

“As far as I was concerned, he was just another dad of one of Carly’s friends,” says Sonya. “He said he worked in security and showed me his licence. When he mentioned booking a hotel room for the night, I offered him the spare room.”

The next morning, before leaving for work, Sonya popped into Carly’s bedroom to say goodbye. She exploded when she found Shane beside Carly, on top of the bed while her daughter was sleeping beneath the covers, and immediately threw him out.

“I was horrified,” Sonya says, explaining she threatened Shane that she would call the police after Carly revealed he touched her inappropriately and tried to seduce her, insisting his son wouldn’t mind.

Four weeks later Carly went missing after arranging a sleepover with a friend. Police later found her body on a beach at Port Elliot – she’d been bashed, suffocated by having her face pushed into the sand and then thrown into the sea to drown. Sonya says she knew immediately Shane had to be involved.

‘It was a terribly cruel thing you did to this beautiful child’

When he was arrested, Sonya found out that Brandon didn’t actually exist – and nor did Shane.

He was invented by 48-year-old Garry Francis Newman, who was online arranging to meet a 14-year-old WA girl when he was arrested. Police quickly discovered he had 200 fake internet identities.

“It was a terribly cruel thing you did to this beautiful, impressionable child,” Justice Trish Kelly said to Newman after he was found guilty of Carly’s murder and sentenced to life behind bars in March 2010.

“I say ‘child’ because that’s what she was – a child who fell in love with the idea of the handsome, musically inclined and rather exotic Brandon Kane. The real man was an overweight, balding middle-aged paedophile with sex and murder on his mind.”

Sonya went on to establish Carly’s Foundation, an organisation dedicated to raising awareness of online dangers, and lobbied to get a new law criminalising any act in preparation to harm a child, including lying about age to a child online. Carly’s Law was passed two years ago.