In this safeguarding podcast we discuss every parents’ worst nightmare with the inspirational Sonya Ryan; how she turned her family’s desperate tragedy into a force for good by relentlessly campaigning for Carly’s Law first in Australia and now globally.
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There’s a lightly edited for legibility transcript below for those that can’t use podcasts, or for those that prefer to read.
Neil Fairbrother
Welcome to another edition of the SafeToNet Foundation’s safeguarding podcast where we talk about all things to do with safeguarding children in the online digital context.
The online digital context comprises three areas, technology, law and ethics and culture with child safeguarding right in the centre of this Venn diagram and it encompasses all stakeholders between the child using a smartphone and the content or person online that they are interacting with.
In today’s podcast, we are focusing on grooming and the victims of grooming and the ultimate tragedy of a parent’s worst nightmare. And I should say that this podcast will deal with a subject that may affect some of our listeners, and if you are affected by this podcast, please speak to a trusted person or organization.
Joining us on the line from Adelaide, Australia is Sonya Ryan, the CEO of the Carly Ryan Foundation. Welcome to the podcast, Sonia.
Sonya Ryan
Thank you.
Neil Fairbrother
Can you give us a brief resume please of your background so our listeners from around the world have a context of where your you’re coming from and your point of view?
Sonya Ryan
Yes. so my daughter Carly was groomed online by an online predator for around 18 months. He was posing as a young teenage boy. He used a whole bunch of different methods to manipulate and eventually convinced her to meet with him alone under the guise of this fake profile. He even used his own son to lure her and at that meeting they brutally murdered her.
And essentially my whole world fell to pieces. And in that groundless grief, in that trauma, I actually had an enormous amount of clarity and was able to say clearly the gaps in legislation, the under resourcing of law enforcement and could see that there needed to be some significant change.
I mean, this happened to Carly in 2007, and at that time we were really coming into, you know Facebook and other various media in which children can interact online and I thought, gosh, I have to do something because Gary Newman is not going to be the only perpetrator out there using this borderless anonymous platform to infiltrate the lives of innocent kids who are just trying to connect, look for opportunity, their willingness to share their lives and their information.
So what could I do as Carly’s mother, to essentially try and prevent what happened to her from happening to another innocent child, given Carly was the first girl motive on online predator here in Australia?
I guess I had… look, there was a lot of media attention and so I was able to use that media attention to try and begin to find ways to educate the community, equip the community and then also look at legislative reform.
Neil Fairbrother
Okay. This was back in 2007, as you said. Could you remind us what being online was like in 2007? You mentioned Facebook, but that wasn’t really the monster-sized world that it is now. What was it like in 2007?
Sonya Ryan
Myspace, MSN, dial-up connections, you know, Carly’s school wanted her to have a computer for homework use and our computer was in our kitchen and I’d, you know, be over her shoulder looking at her interaction with their friends and the people that she was talking to and this person spoke just like a teenager and, yeah, used various grooming methods to really gain her trust and to really, I guess deceive us as a family and really come across as somebody who had, you know, her interest at heart and who was just a normal teenage boy.
So, you know there was no real online education [about the] internet and off it went and there was no real support for parents and you know, our world growing up was very different to the world that our kids are growing up in now. And so there was really this gap, you know and we were not prepared for a criminal like this at all.
Neil Fairbrother
Yes. The “stranger danger” message perpetuates itself into the online space and advice often given to children is that if you feel uncomfortable at all with someone you’re talking to, then let someone know, block that person from your account and so on. But presumably Carly, who seems to have been a wonderful young woman, thought that she was in love with an 18 year old and didn’t feel uncomfortable or worried…
Sonya Ryan
Yes. And the conversations were not sexualized. For a very, very long time, it was only through the police investigation, we found some sexualised content, but the grooming methods are really quite cunning. You know, looking for vulnerabilities or gaps in a young person’s life and trying to fill those gaps. And, you know, for a giddy teenager, looking at the prospect of you know, a desirable young man who’s into music and into the same things that she was into was really quite you know, exciting for her.
She really thought that it was a really great platform to be able to meet people and that the adults around her were online dating and you know, meeting people on the internet as well and some of the people around her she was seeing having successful relationships.
I think one of her best friends met her boyfriend online and they met up in real life and they had a good relationship. So for her, she just saw this as a potential opportunity to make a good connection and a connection with somebody who was portraying themselves as having genuine care for her. And that, I guess, you know, being a loving, open, warm hearted girl, he basically used her good qualities to be able to lure her and get her to do the things that he wanted her to do.
Neil Fairbrother
Now, subsequently I understand that he kept a notebook detailing some 200 or so online personas he’d created and which he was using in other grooming opportunities in Australia and also internationally. Have you learned that this is a common practice of online groomers, because you’re now advocating very strongly against this kind of thing going on? So what have you learned from this about predators and online groomers?
Sonya Ryan
Well, working with various “JACET” teams, Joint Anti-Child Exploitation Teams around the country and you know, specialised task forces and police forces around the world, sometimes I go into operations and, you know, they [the predators] use various different methods to infiltrate the lives of children. And you know, they are, I guess really building trust and as I said looking for those gaps in a child’s life and trying to fill those gaps. And you know, there are so many different ways in which criminals will, I guess coerce young people into doing things that they normally wouldn’t do.
I mean, I think the real difference between when Carly was online and now is that with all the various apps that are available wherever there are kids, they will be criminals looking to make contact with them. And we are seeing a real rise in the self-generation of child exploitation material and the grooming time has really reduced, so kids are being groomed very, very quickly via apps. And a lot of predators will try and normalize sexualized behaviours. And that’s the kind of thing that we’re really seeing across all different platforms.
Neil Fairbrother
Yes. Our safeguarding expert that we have in house, Sarah Castro, said that groomers are not even grooming now. They are simply spamming messages. They are just getting straight to the point and saying things like “Send us a photo”, “Get naked, show us your tits”, or whatever the message is and just doing it on a mass scale on the basis that one person out of two or three hundred will respond. And once they’ve responded, they’re hooked.
Sonya Ryan
Yes, exactly. And then often then the threats come. So, you know, if you don’t send me another photo or you don’t provide the additional information to me, then I will tell your parents, I will get your family. I will, you know, various different threats and then a child is often then, you know, frozen in fear and unable to negotiate or have the emotional intelligence or the ability to be able to get themselves out of that situation.
And very, very quickly are pulled into this, you know, rabbit hole of exploitation and it’s just absolutely awful, really awful and very, very common. That’s the most common contact is, you know, how old are you, where are you, send me a photo of yourself and then generally the threats will come on from there.
Neil Fairbrother
Okay. Now you managed to use this awful tragedy to create something extremely positive and you’ve created the Carly Ryan Foundation, obviously in her name. What is the Carly Ryan Foundation? What does it do?
Sonya Ryan
So essentially we incorporated as a harm prevention charity. So we’re all about the prevention of child exploitation and child abuse. So there are a few different layers to the work that we do. One is education. We provide workshops and information to the community. We try and close that generation gap between parents and their kids when it comes to the online space, we equip communities with the tools they need to be able to prevent their children being taken advantage of online, either physically, emotionally, or financially.
We do a lot of work in policy reform. I make some recommendations to amendments and legislation to bring legislation up to date with current technology. We support victims of crime. So I’m able to share the tools and the techniques that I learned through going through my own trauma and my own grief, being able to help others to find a way to move forward with that grief and find some form of hope in their future.
Neil Fairbrother
So one of the major pieces of legislative reform that you’ve been able to instigate is commonly known as “Carly’s Law”. What is Carly’s Law?
Sonya Ryan
So there are two versions of Carly’s Law. The first being the Commonwealth or Federal version of Carly’s Law, which says any preparation to harm a child, which includes the misrepresentation of age online, would mean up to 10 years imprisonment. And so it’s almost like anti-terrorism legislation and this is terrorism against our children obviously.
So now that version of Carly’s Law passed in 2017 in Australia and is being used a lot by the Australian Federal police. And I just had meetings with the Minister’s office and the Federal police have said that they don’t want to see any amendments, that it’s working really almost like a gateway to enable them to get in and get a child out of harm before they’re actually offended against. And that is the whole purpose of this legislation: rather than reactive legislation, I wanted to look at preventative legislation. So that was the kind of motivation behind drafting this legislation.
Whereas the State legislation of Carly’s Law, it takes a kind of a step back. It’s tighter. So if you lie about your identity and age to a minor online under the age of 16, and then attempt to meet that minor, that in itself is the offense, the meeting aspect, and that gives police the power to arrest an individual.
And generally when they do, they find exploitation material on computers and other evidence, then they can apply additional charges. And that passed in my State of South Australia in 2018 and we are meeting with Attorney Generals in other States to try and get it into the criminal codes of the other States.
But interestingly, the UN contacted me and said that they would like to assist me in getting this legislation into the criminal codes of other countries and it’s the first of its kind in the world.
And that really, I guess took my breath away. I kind of, just being on this journey and having this kind of tunnel vision of focus to create some kind of positive change, try and create tools for police to be able to act sooner, I didn’t actually realize that it would have such an impact.
And so now I’m traveling all over the world, speaking with various police in America and I’ve been to the UK and New Zealand and there’s interest in Carly’s Law in other countries. So I’m about to go back to the US next week and get into discussions with police in Texas and see if we can get Carly’s Law into the criminal codes over there. So you know, I mean, who knows where this will go?
But I’m just so grateful that I am in a position that I’m able to advocate for you know, children and to essentially potentially protect them from being harmed in the first place because once they’re offended against then, you know, what is their future? You know, it’s a lot of suffering if the child survives that criminal act.
Neil Fairbrother
Indeed. Interesting you mentioned the UN because of course there’s the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and I know that the UN Special Rapporteur on this topic is concerned that the UNCRC is not perhaps being used as well as it could be in many parts of the world. And also the USA is one of only two countries around the world who have not ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. So it would be very interesting to see if this type of wording of your bill could be incorporated into an amended version of the UNCRC.
Sonya Ryan
Yes, absolutely. I mean, the possibilities are endless as far as I’m concerned. I also did a documentary out of the UAE with the Interfaith Alliance and that’s really highlighting the role that religious leaders play within their communities to support children and to support victims.
And it’s just another layer, you know, between government, law enforcement, religious leaders advocates, you know, how can we all come together on a global scale to try and, you know, reduce children being abused online and offline. And we produced this documentary, which was screened out of New York recently and it really calls on all of the service providers and technology companies to essentially say, you know, you have the AI technology to remove the child exploitation material off of your sites, why aren’t you doing it, you know and really making a note of the issue around privacy and profit.
And so that’s something that I’ve been involved in recently and we just had that in parliament here in Australia. So I’m hoping that that documentary will be able to move around the world and have that screened in as many places as possible to really shine a spotlight on the issues. I mean, last year alone, just in the US from only 12 companies, and I’m talking websites that you and I use every day, 48 million images and videos of children being abused were reported to the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children.
Now, 60% of those children were under the age of 12 and most viewed were extreme acts of violence against children. So, you know, this is a global epidemic. It is a darker side of humanity. But it really is going to take the will of society, you know, the will of governments, governments really supporting law enforcement, technology companies coming together and making sure that their platforms are not being used in the exploitation of children.
So it’s going to really take the courage of our society to stand up and really face this head on and see it for what it is and do what we can to, to give our children the best possible future that they can both online and offline. You know, the internet was designed for good. It was designed for connection. This is a human issue, you know? Yeah. And I really want to look at some of the issues around why are people paying to view the exploitation of innocent children. What is happening at a societal level?
Neil Fairbrother
Yes, indeed. Now you mentioned changing law, changing culture. How much opposition, if any, was there to your proposals or was it a walk in the park? Did you push against open doors and they all went through really easily?
Sonya Ryan
Look, there was, I really think it’s just a lack of understanding and knowledge. Some of the pushback was around that maybe the legislation’s too broad. There were some silly statements like you know, from some politicians that were saying things like, Oh, well, you know, what if a 45 year old man wants to play Harry Potter and he’s too embarrassed to say he’s and says he’s 11 you know?
Essentially I just said, look, I can see no legitimate reason why anyone would need to lie about their age to a minor online you know, it just doesn’t make any sense to me at all. That was probably, I guess the barrier, the thinking that the wrong type of people are going to get pulled into this legislation or caught by this legislation.
But you know, discretion of police you know, essentially arresting appropriately, depending on the offense, with the right legislation and essentially what’s the motivation here? It’s to focus on the predators that are grooming children. This is what this legislation is designed for. So, you know, it was a battle.
It took me, gosh, six years of pushing, pushing, pushing until I think the penny just dropped at some point and the government could see that the legislation made sense. And that they needed to do something to try and prevent this kind of crime type against kids. So I was really, really grateful that eventually it was introduced by the government and then it passed very quickly.
Neil Fairbrother
How did you feel when you heard the news that the law had being passed?
Sonya Ryan
Well, I was in Parliament when it was introduced. We hung a quilt made from Carly’s clothing and that was displayed in Parliament, in Australia, in Canberra. And then very, very quickly the law passed. And it was just a huge sense of relief, and really thinking about Carly and thinking about what she would say and what she would think. And I know my daughter, she would be absolutely thrilled to see that something good had come from, you know, so much loss and so much suffering.
And for me as her mother, it was really important to me that, you know, she faced the worst side of humanity and she suffered greatly. And, you know, that amount of suffering cannot be for nothing that, you know, how can I use her legacy? How could I represent her moving forward to, you know, make sure that what happened to her didn’t happen to another innocent childhood trauma, or reduce the risk of that brutality happening to other kids.
Neil Fairbrother
Indeed. And you are continuing that in other ways now because Carly’s Law isn’t the only legal change that you’ve been involved in because you’ve been lobbying against the release of recidivative paedophiles. Can you tell us about that?
Sonya Ryan
Yes, yes. So we had one of South Australia’s worst offending paedophiles coming up due for release and one of his victims approached our organization and was beside himself essentially about the prospect of this person being released. And, you know, we know that he was a serious, serious serial child sex offender. And so we asked for an urgent meeting with the Attorney General, we took this victim with us and thankfully the Attorney General listened to the recommendations that we made and then drafted the Release on License Bill and the government passed that Bill twenty minutes before this person was due for release. And essentially it says, you know, if a perpetrator comes to the end of their sentence and they are believed to not be rehabilitable or a high risk to the community, that they will not be released.
So that was tested in the High Court just the other day. And this person will never be released. So what it’s essentially saying is that these perpetrators will not see the light of day when they come to the end of the sentence. So for us, you know a huge sense of relief.
And we’ve also been making recommendations on the Crimes against Children Bill before the Federal parliament at the moment too. And that’s got a few different elements in that mandatory sentence, concurrent sentences, a bunch of other things as well. And we’ve made some recommendations around that.
So, you know, I feel really, really grateful that, you know, over the years we’ve built such a great relationship with law enforcement, with government and I’m on a quite a few advisory boards with the eSafety Commissioner here and the Australian Centre to counter child exploitation.
And I’m able to use my voice and my position to be able to advocate for positive change and to recommend practical recommendations that can create action. Because, you know, there’s one thing I get sick of is attending a whole bunch of different conferences and a whole bunch of different events where we’re constantly reminded of the problem. All of the issues that law enforcement is dealing with, the community is dealing with, that our children are having to suffer. And yet there’s no action. There’s a lot of talk, but yeah, I want to see action. I want to see, you know, things happening.
Neil Fairbrother
Yes, indeed. Now in the UK, we have a similar law to Carly’s Law. Section 67 of the Serious Crime Act, 2015 inserts a new offense into the Sexual Offenses Act 2003 at Section 15a, which says “…sexual communication with a child for the purposes of obtaining sexual gratification is subject to a two year maximum prison sentence”. So it’s kind of…
Sonya Ryan
About the meeting? What about the State version, the faking identity and age and then attempting to meet?
Neil Fairbrother
Well, that I don’t have the details of, but my question really was, I think you said a 10 year prison sentence. We have a two year maximum prison sentence. Is two years really enough?
Sonya Ryan
No, I don’t believe that it is because of the emotional and physical impact on the child. And you know, often when a child comes to realization of what’s actually [happened], that they’ve been groomed, that they’ve been manipulated, can come to such a shock to them and can really cause a lot of distress. And I think that we should be looking at maximum sentences, adequate sentences for this kind of activity.
And I can’t think of anything worse really, than the manipulation and grooming and looking to you know, sexually exploit a child, you know it’s just the most horrendous thing.
So I think you know, governments really need to send a really clear message that if you are thinking about offending against a child, grooming a child, exploiting a child in any way, then the maximum sentence will be applied, you know, you will be arrested and there will be consequences for that choice.
Neil Fairbrother
The national charity in the UK, the NSPCC, were the driving force in many ways behind this amendment to our law in the UK. Tt was passed in 2017, April, 2017 and they’ve reported recently that there’s been more than 1300 cases of prosecution of sexual communication with a child…
Sonya Ryan
That doesn’t surprise me at all.
Neil Fairbrother
And typically it was a communication with girls aged between 12 and 15 and some as young as seven. My question actually was, well, does that surprise you, which you’ve pre-empted. Are there similar kinds of figures to what you see in Australia?
Sonya Ryan
Yeah. And you know, we’re seeing boys groomed just as much as girls. And we’re seeing the age reducing, so we’re seeing, you know, toddlers really young children, we’re saying kids six, seven, eight years old, being exposed to pornography and being coerced into doing sexualized behaviours or offending against each other.
I mean, it’s just a real issue. And as I said with the reports to the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) in the US I mean, that’s just mind blowing to think 48 million images reported in a year, and videos. I mean, you know, if we looked at the global numbers, what our law enforcement are actually having to deal with, I mean I think you could have triple the amount of law enforcement working in the online area and you still wouldn’t have enough officers to deal with the issues around the grooming of children and the exploitation of children.
And a lot of this exploitation is happening on the “clear net”. Of course, you know, 80% of Dark Web traffic is child exploitation material, but a lot of this is on the sites that we use every day.
Neil Fairbrother
Yes. Indeed. Now, would some kind of Age Verification process have helped do you think In Carly’s case?
Sonya Ryan
I think potentially, I mean, you know, we need to have Age Verification for things we do in life. So I just don’t really say why it’s such an issue to have Age Verification for users, but also too for live streaming. You know, we’re seeing all kinds of horrendous things happening on live streaming, you know, terrorism acts, people getting shot, children being exploited, you know.
Could there be a system where you need to provide so many points of identification to receive a code number, you put that code number in then you’re able to live stream or, or you know, download an app or whatever it might be. Because then at least there’s a direct thread back to that user. And of course it’d be layers of complication, you know, offenders use offshore servers and all kinds of things, but, you know, it would have to be another layer of defence.
And also remembering that that technology companies have AI that that can flag this kind of behaviour. And so, you know, I think we should be looking at using the technology to really you know, filter out this kind of content. We’ve got PhotoDNA. We’ve got, you know other great software and other companies doing great things, like Adobe are doing some really great work and providing software for law enforcement. You know, I really think that there is a capability to really create some very positive and very effective outcomes.
Neil Fairbrother
Okay. Now the Carly Ryan Foundation itself has released a personal safety app called Thread. What is it and how does it work?
Sonya Ryan
So essentially Thread has the ability to basically connect users to their loved ones. And that’s currently going through a major update, so it’s actually not live at the moment. We’re looking at getting additional funders on board and it’s only available in Australia.
Essentially the concept behind it is when you’re on the move, when you leave home, you’re able to check in using a live location, and you know, there’s also the ability to put in a message as well and a message field to say “I’m here, I’ve arrived”, “I’m leaving a location”, “I’m on my way”. In an emergency situation essentially you would press an alert if something was happening or somebody was approaching you or you’re in an unsafe situation and the app automatically dials emergency services, and gives a live location.
So the idea was, you know, we need to be able to let our kids explore the world, but how can they do it and still have a thread or link back to their family? So as I said, it’s not live at the moment, just due to technological updates and the changes in app development, we just want to make sure that it’s the best that it can possibly be. So we’re in negotiations at the moment in relation to getting some funding for that. I’m getting some support to get that out, not only in Australia, but globally.
Neil Fairbrother
Okay. now we’re running short of time, but I just want to let everyone know that you’ve recently been included in a fantastic book called “Trailblazers, 100 Inspiring South Australian Women”, so congratulations on that. That’s a fantastic result.
Sonya Ryan
Thank you so much. Yeah, it was really quite an honour to be included in that book. And you know, another thing that happened recently in November, I was awarded “Mother of the Nation” award in the UAE in Abu Dhabi. And yeah, I think the last person to win that was like the Queen of Sweden and my goodness, you know, if somebody had said to me that this type of thing would be happening you know, I didn’t think I’d survive the loss of my daughter, let alone be where I am today and doing the things that I’m doing and getting these extraordinary awards and amazing recognition.
But of course I would much rather my daughter be here, I can tell you but, you know, in circumstances out of my control, I’m just doing what I can.
Neil Fairbrother
Sonya, listen, thank you so much. It’s an absolute privilege to speak with you and we met briefly in London earlier this year, it will be fantastic to meet up again next time you’re in the UK.
Sonya Ryan
Yeah, I believe I’m coming over to speak to a conference there sometime next year, so I will definitely check in and thank you so much for having me.
Neil Fairbrother
Just to say, by the way, that the Carly Ryan Foundation’s website is very easy to find. It is quite simply, Carly Ryan Foundation.com please logon and have a look. There’s lots of fantastic information on there. And a lot of resources that people can use to learn more about Carly, but also about grooming and the various issues there. And as I said at the start of this podcast, if you have been at all affected by the detail of what you just heard, then please talk to a trusted friend or a trusted organization and let your feelings be known.