‘I’m the monster chasing the boogeyman’: Inside the life of SA’s pedophile hunter
He’s 194cm and 112kg and built to fight. Meet the SA man dubbed “most hated by child sex offenders”.
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At 194cm and 112kg, Andrew Carpenter is built to fight.
A former sparring partner for a South Australian heavyweight MMA champ, the 38-year-old still thrives on the effort and ferocity of five gruelling gym sessions every week.
He brings that energy into his work life, too, as a crusading Adelaide lawyer taking on the “worst people in the world”.
That battle – to make perverted pedophiles pay for their crimes by securing compensation for their victims – has earned him the reputation of being the “man most hated by Australian child sex offenders”.
It’s a moniker he wears with great pride.
“There’s not too many lawyers out there who are happy to fight for their clients in and out of the courtroom,” says Carpenter, who sported a black eye in court from helping Mike “the Turnernator” Turner prepare for his title fights.
“They say pedophiles are the boogeymen that harass children, well I’m the monster you send after the boogeyman. People generally take one look at me and see I’m not just a guy in a suit. I don’t back down from a fight. I got locked in a cage with an Australian heavyweight champion for years and never complained, I’m not going to back down from someone who harms a child.”
Carpenter has managed “hundreds” of cases against the state’s most notorious pedophiles, including former private school teacher Stephen Hamra, 68, who was jailed in 2019 for abusing two boys between 1977 and 1986. He’s also representing survivor-victims who claim they were abused during their time at the now-defunct Magill Youth Training Centre and by former teachers at Blackfriars Priory School.
The well-known lawyer – with a growing list of celebrity friends and allies – has built a considerable profile on Instagram, where nearly 4000 followers despair at his weekly posts tallying the percentages of child-abuse cases before South Australia’s District Court. The sorry sum has been as high as 51 per cent.
“It’s a weekly series to highlight how bad it is … the page gets 190,000 hits a month,” Carpenter says. “I started it because I just wanted to get the message out on just how prolific this crime is.”
The fight against Australia’s most notorious offenders doesn’t come without its risks. The father-of-three has had people follow him as he dropped off his son at childcare. He’s also had to take out intervention orders to protect his family.
“There’s been a few stalkers that have come close to home. People have made threats against my family and my children,” says Carpenter, who has been married for the past six years and has three children aged five, two and four months.
“The weirdest thing is I’m going after people that harm the most vulnerable, I’m not doing anything that’s controversial.
“I don’t know anyone in their right mind who’d support a pedophile. Everyone knows someone who’s drunk driven, done drugs or gotten into a punch-up at a nightclub – people still have time for them. I don’t know anyone who would give a sex offender a second chance.”
In 2020, when Carpenter took his son to childcare for the first time and was forced to “trust someone else with my child knowing how bad child sex offending was”, he was determined to shift his fight into a whole new battleground – politics.
With the courts struggling to secure criminal convictions in more than 99 per cent of all child sex abuse atrocities, Carpenter set his sights on making offenders suffer with their hip pockets.
He launched a public campaign calling for legislative change that would give victims access to pedophiles’ superannuation, currently protected by law. Giving victims access to the funds would provide a powerful deterrent.
“This isn’t a divisive law change, the only people against this change will be pedophiles,” says Carpenter, who is infuriated that five years later there has been no action from politicians on his Super for Survivors campaign.
“It’s such a no-brainer cause. If it’s happening to one in three girls and one in five boys, this isn’t a problem you can arrest out of. The only way you can stop this from happening is to ensure if they don’t get criminal convictions that they will lose everything. It’s not going to cost the taxpayer anything, it’s going to compensate victim-survivors and deter the offending. Why isn’t the Labor government supporting this change that would ensure this crime is minimised and there is proper redress available for survivors? People don’t want to talk about child sexual abuse but my thing is to have uncomfortable conversations so people realise the problem we are facing.”
Carpenter’s public fight has drawn a big-name support base. TV stars Madeleine West and Shaynna Blaze are in his corner, as is former Australian of the Year Grace Tame, who reached out by text to get involved after learning about Super for Survivors in the media.
Blaze, The Block judge and co-founder of family abuse charity Voice of Change, calls her new friend a “man on a mission to create justice for victims and survivors”.
“Andrew instantly was engaging and passionate and incredibly personable,” says Blaze, who reached out to Carpenter on Instagram after admiring his posts and articles.
“He is honest, he is facts-based and he is blunt. Not everyone will like that but this is a subject that has been ‘danced’ around way too long, we need someone like Andrew willing to push forward and make action as well as noise.
“Andrew has the legal knowledge and facts that allow him to talk politics, policies and what needs to change. He is showing victims and survivors that there are people in the system on their side.”
West hails Carpenter for making an “enormous, well-overdue and necessary difference because this is a national problem which has impacted every socio-economic class in every state, town, schoolyard, street … and all-too commonly our own backyards”.
The former Neighbours actress and child protection activist, who helped to jail her own childhood abuser for his decades-old crimes against his young neighbours in the Victorian town of Woodend, met Carpenter when he appeared on her podcast, Predatory, in 2023.
She has put her star power behind his bid to secure civil success for the vast majority of victims denied the justice of a criminal conviction. “Just having your experience acknowledged is enormously therapeutic,” says the 45-year-old, pregnant with her seventh child. “Where a criminal conviction may not be possible, a civic settlement in a victim’s favour vindicates their suffering and gives them agency to rebuild their life. Aside from being a genuinely lovely individual, Andrew wants to ensure victims have a chance at a better life, and see those who abuse children get what is coming for them. He has courage in convictions and knowing someone like him is on the case should bring us all enormous comfort.”
For Edan van Haren, who was just 14 when he became a victim of Maurice Van Ryn while living in regional NSW, Carpenter is “one of the greatest people I have ever met”.
Carpenter is helping van Haren, who has moved from NSW and now lives in Marion, in his fight against the former Bega cheese boss.
“He’ll never ever be truly able to understand the amount of opportunity and chance he’s given to people in my situation,” says the now-28-year-old, who still deals with the daily impact of being a child abuse survivor.
Van Ryn’s legal team initially offered van Haren $125,000 in compensation, including $60,000 to cover legal fees. But he fought for a better deal and eventually secured $1.4m through the courts. But the jailed pedophile – who was given seven years for his crimes against van Haren, with all but 18 months to be served concurrently – declared bankruptcy in December 2023, bringing the axe down on honouring that payment.
Carpenter has now stepped in to help van Haren. They hold on to hope that the law will change and Van Ryn will be forced to pay up.
“While we wait for the (superannuation) legislation to change, what Andrew has given me is some sort of ability to fight against the person that did all that damage to me when I was younger,” says van Haren. “It felt like I didn’t get any justice from the prison sentence … but Andrew has helped to give me hope.”
Working out of Parkside-based Websters Lawyers, Carpenter knows he doesn’t fit the typical lawyer mode. “I’m not going to go to Friday night drinks, play golf, ride bikes or buy a BMW,” laughs Carpenter, who drives an old navy blue Holden Commodore – the colour of his beloved Dallas Cowboys – and is an MMA commentator in Adelaide and Melbourne.
Instead, he’s working his imposing presence – physically, politically and legally – to target the “monsters that walk among us”. “I emasculate them because I’m twice most of their size. If they try to come near my victim-survivor, it’s not going to happen on my watch.” ■
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