Mother of murdered teen demands harsher penalties for online predators
A decade has passed since Adelaide schoolgirl Carly Ryan was killed by a 50-year-old man masquerading as her teenage love interest, but her mother is still demanding harsher penalties for child sex offenders.
The 15-year-old was murdered in 2007 after her 18-year-old musician boyfriend, “Brandon Kane", turned out to be middle-aged child sex offender, Gary Francis Newman.
Since then her mother, Sonya Ryan, has spent much of her life making sure what happened to her daughter, never happens to anyone else’s child.
“To me, it is utterly appalling and we really need to look at our judicial system and look at where things are going wrong and where we are failing our children,” Mrs Ryan told Fairfax Media.
'From my perspective, if an abalone fisherman gets six years for taking too many abalone, but a person who offends against a child gets six months in prison – what does that say about our society?
Carly’s death forever changed the way parents and children thought about online chat, with Mrs Ryan using her own heartbreak to educate those that don’t know better through the Carly Ryan Foundation.
Her advocacy for harsher penalties comes 10 years after her daughter started an 18-month online relationship, oblivious to the predator that was waiting at the other end.
Looking for a way to meet, Newman introduced himself into Carly’s life as “Brandon’s” father, “Shane”, even using his new disguise as a way to attend her 15th birthday party.
Arriving with wads of cash and intimate apparel, Newman began touching Carly, telling her he loved her, only to be rejected.
With his hopes and plans in tatters, Newman returned home to plan his revenge.
One month later, he (Brandon) lured Carly down the coast to Victor Harbor, where he bashed her unconscious, suffocated her, before throwing her into the ocean to drown.
Newman was arrested 11-days later, sitting in front of his computer, talking to a 14-year-old Western Australian girl.
Sentencing him to life in prison, the judge told the court that Carly had fallen in love “with the idea of the handsome, musically inclined and rather exotic Brandon Kane, the real man was in fact an overweight, balding, middle-aged paedophile with sex and murder on his mind”.
Meanwhile, her mother is now advocating with Senator Nick Xenophon to make it illegal for adults to lie about their age online with children.
"All the major parties have agreed it is necessary – it is just a case of tweaking the legislation with the federal police and making sure it is prosecutable – to capture people who are looking to take advantage of youth online and misrepresenting their age and identity," Mrs Ryan said.
