IN recent years Sonya Ryan's life has been filled with grief and despair as she coped with the murder of her 15-year-old daughter Carly.
But instead of turning away from society, the Adelaide woman has worked tirelessly to prevent the same thing happening to other young Australians.
Ms Ryan established the Carly Ryan Foundation to promote internet safety through presentations in schools and universities and to support victims of cyber crime.
It is that work which has resulted in her being named the South Australian of the Year for 2013.
She says what happened to her daughter can happen to anyone.
"People that groom the young online are manipulating and controlling. They know exactly how to target a child," Ms Ryan says.
"They become the most important person in that child's life, then use that trust to do whatever they like to their victim."
In the case of her daughter, the pedophile was Garry Francis Newman, a middle-aged Victorian man who is serving a minimum of 29 years for murder.
In 2007 Newman used a cyberspace alter-ego, "Brandon Kane", to communicate with Carly after meeting her through a gothic vampire website.
The teenager fell in love with the fictitious guitarist who portrayed himself as a member of the "emo" subculture.
But when Newman, posing as Brandon Kane's father, travelled to Adelaide in February 2007 in a bid to fulfil his sexual fantasies, Carly rejected his advances.
Evidence at the trial revealed she had been bashed, suffocated and placed in the water at Port Elliott, south of Adelaide, where she drowned.
As part of her ongoing campaign Ms Ryan wants online safety to become a compulsory component of the national education curriculum.
She has also thrown her support behind proposed new federal laws that would make it illegal for adults to lie online about their age to meet children.
Independent senator Nick Xenophon plans to introduce legislation into parliament when it resumes in February to reform existing grooming laws.
Called Carly's Law, after Ms Ryan's daughter, the legislation is expected to be referred to a Senate inquiry.
"The problem with current grooming laws is that the police have to prove the predator has contacted the child with a sexual purpose," Senator Xenophon says.
"This reform will make it much easier to protect children."
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