No FilterThe Ultimate Betrayal: Hannah Grundy's Deepfake Nightmare
A series of cryptic emails. A terrifying discovery. A betrayal 10 years in the making.
When high school teacher Hannah Grundy received a message about explicit images of her circulating online, she dismissed it as a scam. But as the warnings persisted, she uncovered a nightmare far worse than she could have imagined—a deepfake pornographic site dedicated to her, filled with violent images and fantasies, orchestrated by someone she trusted completely.What you’ll hear:
- The shocking moment Hannah realised she was being targeted
- How she and her partner uncovered the person behind the attacks
- The frustrating legal battle to bring the perpetrator to justice
- Why she’s speaking out—and what needs to change
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CREDITS:
Host: Kate Langbroek
Guest: Hannah Grundy
Executive Producer: Naima Brown
Senior Producer: Grace Rouvray
Audio Producer: Jacob Round
Mamamia acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the Land we have recorded this podcast on, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. We pay our respects to their Elders past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures.
You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast.
Mama Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast is recorded on.
I was terrified all the time.
You know, there's times where I'm meant to be at school by myself on the weekend, maybe to check.
Something or be on some kind of function or something. I wouldn't go. We bought cameras for the house. I wore an Apple Watch that would tell Chris.
When I arrived to school and when I got home it was summer, and I wouldn't give the windows open, just in case I was in a different room because the things that Andy had wrote about me were so graphic.
From MoMA Mia, you're listening to No Filter. I'm Kate Langbrook, and that is the voice of one of the bravest women I have ever spoken to, Hannah Grundy. Hannah's story starts somewhere familiar for a lot of us. Early days of UNI, late nights out, making new friends over drinking games, or maybe you were pulling long shifts at casual jobs but forming friendships with colleagues into the early hours of the morn. Well, that was Hannah Grundy's life when she started studying at Sydney UNI over a decade ago, but she could never have imagined that those friendships would ultimately lead to the horrific unraveling of her life and the lives of dozens small women, many of them her friends. Hannah's nightmare, and it was a waking nightmare, began in August twenty twenty two when she stumbled upon violent degrading AI generated pornographic images of herself. These fake images had been posted on truly disturbing websites alongside graphic polls encouraging hairiness acts. The website also included her full name, her suburb, her Instagram handle. As Hannah and her partner Chris dove deeper into the site, they discovered more women they knew, friends and colleagues, and realized this wasn't random. Determined to uncover the source, they embarked on their own investigation, only to uncover the person behind it all was one of their closest friends. This story feels almost unreal. It's like something out of a dark thriller. Yet for nearly three years, Hannah and Chris live this piecing together each twisted detail, fighting against the faceless world of the Internet. And the unchecked power of AI. Hannah's story is a stark reminder of the damage anonymity and advanced technology can cause in the wrong hands. But more than that, it's a story of extraordinary resilience. What struck me most about Hannah was her unwavering strength, her courage, her relentless pursuit of justice, a powerful testament to personal and legal perseverance. And because Hannah is a school teacher, I had to start today's interview on my best behavior. Good afternoon, miss Grundy.
Good afternoon. Oh gosh, I haven't heard that for a while in class.
To be honest, are you a first name teacher or a surname teacher?
So I definitely a sturname teacher. But the girls don't.
Often say the good afternoon, missus Grundy anymore.
No, No, they're too resentful, they're too tired. Can you take me back in time to a place called the Manning Bar where something wonderful happened with you increase? Yeah.
Look, I had just moved up to Sydney from Wollongong.
I was very young.
I had worked in bars for a couple of years down there, and so I thought it would be nice for me to work in Manning Bar because I could make some friends in Sydney that way, and that's pretty much where my core social group has come from. And when I was at Manning Bar, I met my partner Chris, and he was another bartender there, and we're going on I think thirteen years now.
So okay, so you were both were you both students at the time and it was the UNI bar?
Yeah, so were both students at Sydney Uni.
I was taking signs at that point and he was taking engineering and maths, so our paths probably wouldn't have crossed otherwise.
So very lucky to have worked there.
You increase. Was it a love at first sight or was it you were hanging out in a group and then you kind of went I think he might like me.
Look, he actually kept coming to the bar when I was working to put in his resume as he just moved up from Blue Blue Mountains, but the resume still said the Blue Mountains, so I kept.
Putting it in the bin.
It was silly, but he so wanted to work there that he and he just moved. So he eventually said he would work for free, and the bar manager said all right, then get him in.
Really he is now, you said, the Manning Bar became such a one of those pivotal places like Central Perk. You know, it sounds like you all hung out and you made amazing lifelong friends. Can you tell me a little bit about your group from there?
Yeah, I think you know, working in a bar, you end up working on the days where everyone else is going out. So you miss a Friday night, you missed the Saturday night, miss.
All of the good nights.
So when you work with a group of very young people that are your age at the bar, you always hang out together, so you go out for drinks afterwards, you stay back for drinks at the workplace. You know, Newtown is such a cool place to be and it's open all night. We would just hang out together. So we were a really really strong group of ten or fifteen people, and birthdays, we went on holidays together the whole time I wasn't Manning.
That was just my core social group those kind of formative years. They are your best friends, so we hang out for all.
Of our big occasions, even though our lives kind of went in separate directions.
Yeah, and it's interesting because you and Chris ended up becoming a couple, and sometimes when that happens, you kind of move away a little bit from your single friends or from those friends that you met when you were single. But that didn't happen with you, guys. You kind of stayed tight with a core.
Look.
Yeah, we stayed very tight. I think it because we're all in different parts of our lives. So I guess some of us got married, and then some of us had babies, and some of us just stayed single and did all sorts of things.
So it was almost like a family.
You just if you saw one of them, even if you hadn't seen them for six months, seven months, it was like you hadn't had any time past.
And so you and Chrease have. You're living your best lives, You've just bought a house, You're really embedded as a couple, and then do you get a strange message from someone.
I had been getting a couple of strange things on all of my social media's and then they're kind of They've been closed for ten years since I became a teacher, and I started getting more random messages from men. But I just ignored them because I thought that's what it is to be a girl on the internet you just ignored. But I do remember saying to Chris, I think my email's turned up somewhere, or something has happened, something has happened, my name's come up.
So because this is what was the nature of those messages.
They were sexual or they were creepy, and they acted like they knew me. And there was a couple that had photos of me in them that were just taking off my account but like menacing. But right still, they didn't have enough in them for me to think it wasn't just that I had turned up somewhere and these were just random creeps.
So I just deleted them straight away.
It was kind of a this used to happen when my Facebook was open, ah, And so I got an email and it went to my spam folder. And this is in around twenty twenty two, it might've been twenty twenty one at the very end. And it just was a forward from another email to a woman who I won't say her name, and it said that there were pictures of her online and that he could help figure out who it was if we went to the police. And all mine was was just a forward of that, and it said this is happening.
To you too.
Hammer. Oh.
I just thought that was so random that I didn't do anything.
And then I kept getting I got another one and I ignored that too, And then the one that really kind of got me to act was one that was addressed to me.
How much longer after the first one.
I'd ignored them for about three months, it was only two at that point.
But they just they didn't give me anything to do.
They said, you know, if you have a police complaint, I will talk to the police.
But I didn't.
I didn't know what anything they.
Were talking about.
So the one that made me act it was addressed directly to me, and it said that a man was posting pictures of me online. It had a link in it and it said the above link contains disturbing material. Might beware. And I got that when I was home alone. And I know not to click a.
Link from Suing. We've all learned that.
Yeah, I just waited for my partner to get home until we opened it.
We both looked at it.
We sat with it for a second and we thought, look, best not to click that link. But if we just put the link into Google and search it, then that's a bit safer, and so when we did that, I mean, I'm you know, I still think it was I still thought it was fake, you know, I just I had no idea and kind of Chris went into the computer room and he did that, and I'm waiting there really like so shocked, and I just remember him. He turned the iPad to me and he.
Just scrolled through and.
It's a forum based kind of website, so it's post after post, and there was just like he would have easily done ten or fifteen photos of me of you. Yeah, pornographic photos of me.
Yeah, so not photos of you, and yet photos of.
You, Yeah, hardcore porn, degrading porn, violent porn of me. And then yeah, my face had been kind of superimposed on the women in them.
So in that moment and after, what is that that is between you and Chris and the computer? Is it disbelief?
I don't think it was disbelief because there were so many right pay real fear because it was immediately obvious that someone had spent hours and hours and hours doing it. You know, some of them were really pathetic efforts at photoshop, and then some of them are convincing AI And so this person had obviously spent many, many, many nights, and that's just on the first look of what we saw doing it, and so I was just, I think, really really scared at first.
What did you do? What did you decide to do? Did you spend the night in discussing it or like what? That has got to be one of the most radical shifts in mood and one of those moments in which you know that your life is radically shifting. Course.
Yeah, yeah, it definitely was, because look, I just started back at school that.
Term and everything was going.
So well for us, and it just crashed down on us like a ton of bricks. So I guess after i'd seen I think maybe that first page of posts the thread was ten to twelve pages at that point, it got larger and all sorts of other things came up. I just saw that one page and that many and I had to come into a different room because I just said, if I see any more of that, I think I would break down. I need to not see myself in those positions. I cannot deal with that.
So I came in here.
I came into the lounge room still freaking out. Chris went through it a bit more. I guess what we decided to do. We both kind of I guess, I don't know what we would say.
We just wanted to be able to do something about it.
So what ended up happening is Chris went through it enough that we stilled to notice that the same person was posting our friends as well from Manning Bar.
So there were how many girls that you worked with at Manning Bar were.
Also This is a hard one.
I'm in the in the images.
To the police had around sixty women on it. Twenty six went to court and we were in on what happened with us. But the ones that I saw that were my friends. There was two very close friends of mine, and then there was quite a few people that had either come to the bar who worked briefly at the bar, but they.
Didn't show up as much. It was mainly two of my friends that were.
So you worked out pretty quickly that the link was Manning Bar.
What we worked at originally is that when you look at all the pictures, you can tell which photos they come from. I don't have a huge social media presence, so I could tell from a pornographic image, oh, actually that's my face from my engagement photo, or that's my face from women's wedding. So you do that, it started to look like it was just one of our friends. And then when we saw these other women, yeah, and we plugged them into Facebook. We just kept churning them into Facebook. And there was lots that weren't from Manny, but they were from other bars around Sydney and you could just put them into Facebook and see who had mutual friends with And so we did that the whole night. We just spent Christals on the couch with the iPad. I didn't want to see it, yeah, but he would yell out a name and I would plug it into my phone like Instagram and Facebook, and we'd write down all the people that were connected. And we just kept doing that and doing that until we got so small the group.
So how small was the group that you narrowed it down to?
Look, we very early in the night narrowed it down to three, and we were sure it would be some of them more than others, you know what I mean, Like we were just really hoping, I guess that it would be some of them other than others.
But these three kind of work together.
They're very good friends that've been in lots of bars together, so it was quind of hard to discern them. But what ended up happening is who it was post of these was completely random people off the internet.
And then it just became very obvious. Right, Yeah, so we got it down to the one that night.
Yeah, so you knew that night who it was.
Yeah.
And even though I mean, the images are bad enough, but there was a rolling poll I understand up at the top of the page that was basically saying inviting men to vote or to participate in saying how they would like to rape the women.
Mine was called the Destruction of Hannah.
And then at the top there was a poll and it said how would you rape Hannah? And then it had you know, seven or six options. They were very graphic, and then hundreds and hundreds of men had vote on it.
So at the end of this night, the Eve of Destruction really wasn't it of your life as you knew it. You've narrowed it down already, so straight away you start ditch digging, really, which is interesting, and you've narrowed it down to who you think it is, I.
Guess at the same time, and this is like Chris is a hero for this as well he made a doc that had because we got worried. We didn't really realize how long this person had been doing it of me, Like maybe he just did it all this wrong, right, so what if you know it takes it down or what Chris, every time you saw a quote about me, he takes screenshot put in a folder. And so what we did was we made a dock and we had all of the women that we had gone through, and then it was and then how they were linked to me, how they were linked to this person, the links to the posts and then the screenshots.
To the post and everything.
And so that's kind of how we busied our ourselves that night, because I guess the idea was I was going to go to the police office in the morning, and you just want to be able.
To yeah, of course somewhat with and I.
It was feel better at the time because it was so scared and there's nothing really you can do except that then yeah.
Yeah, there's nowhere else to turn, but also you don't know where to go. Yeah.
Look, I've never been and I'm so lucky for this a victim of a crime, and I've never been in trouble for a crime either.
So I didn't even know.
Really what you do with it, but I knew it wasn't an emergency, so I just thought, like, we leave it for tonight, we sit on this, and then tomorrow morning, fresher minds, we get up.
And we go.
How did you sleep that night?
Not well? Not well?
I mean I was went to be at school the next day and it's like one of those really nice days where I think it was a swimming carnival and that's like precious day because you go and you just cheer on the girls, and so you call in and I just said I was sick. But yeah, I don't think I slept much that night.
So you woke up in the morning and you were resolved to go to the police. Were you and Chris going together to the police?
No, Look, I wanted to go by myself. I still didn't, I guess maybe get the gravity.
Of it, and I really thought that they would separate us anyway. I don't know. I don't know how.
I woke up just in them like they were going to interrogate youll what's I mean? Right?
And I guess I was feeling very I can do this, this will be fun, understand me.
When I go.
So now, I called them in the morning just in case I don't know what you do, and they just said, no, rock on in, like come in whenever. Because I thought, maybe you need to make an appointment for something like this.
They just had come on in.
Or that there's a special squad or yeah, yeah.
I got dressed, took my little document. I just had it on my phone though, and.
I took my laptop too, and then I drove down there. Yeah, and I saw.
Them because what you were about to tell the police was that you had done the preliminary work, the detective work, and you had worked out who the person was, and who was that person.
After we'd done all of our little detective work, we realized it was our very good friend. His name's Andy Hayler, Andrew Hayler. He has been at that point our friend for ten years. He was part of that very core group at Manning Bar. You know, when I started at the bar, I started as just a bartender, and he taught me to be a bar supervisor and then the venue manager there.
He was someone that and.
It still chokes me out thinking about it, because I really cared about him and I really had my best interests at hand.
I guess it's still very weird to think about.
So not only had you discovered these, you know, violent images, total breach of your privacy or whatever, but the knowledge that you were about to go to the police with that it was one of your dearest friends.
Yeah, we just couldn't believe it either, even that night, Like I remember, I was lying in bed and having a chat about it, and it just it was so obvious from how many women he had posted it had to be him, but we couldn't believe it. And it took us so long still to believe it. I mean, you know it's to be true, but I just I just couldn't. I still can't make sense of it. And I think an interesting to me and Chris were saying it.
At that time.
We were planning a wedding and it really got put to a side because of this. But the way that it makes people understand how close he was to us is we were going to invite thirty people, just both of us together, thirty and he was one of them. So it was one of our including our family, closest friends. It unbelievable.
After this short break, Hannah tells me what happened after she went to the police and how she didn't get the help she was hoping for. So you went to the police station, you told them, you showed them your folder, you showed them the images. Were you talking to one person behind the desk? Did they take you into a room? Was it a woman? Was it a man? What happens?
So I just turned up and I think that I don't think they I don't know whether they picked a woman or a man because of what was happening, but it was a female constable and they put me in a room that was right next.
To the front desk.
So as I was giving my statement, and as I was showing them these naked pictures of me and like really incredibly violent and degrading positions, there would be a conflict at the front desk and someone would come in.
I'm a police officer.
Yeah yeah, yeah.
He would have to leave to go deal with something like at one point, some guy was yelling at the front. I understand that's what the police is about. I get it's a very hard job. But I'm just sitting here in this little room alone.
And they couldn't get the website up on their computer. I don't know if that's because they have a porn filter.
So they were phone, Oh, of all the times to have take issues.
And so then they told me that they thought the website had gone down, and I said, well, I'm on it on my phone. So I went through it on my phone and oh, saying I just don't want to see it. Please don't show me it at all. I cannot see any more of that stuff.
And she repeatedly.
Turned the phone around to show me things and make out what I looked like in the photos.
What do you mean?
So at one point she found a photo and it was me and it was in an outfit, and she told me I look cute and that one and then show it for me. And you just laughed because you're like, I really need these people to be on my side.
I really want them tell me, do you know?
So you laugh along, and also you're just so shocked you just go along with it. And there was another time, and I don't know if my partner was there by them, because once I gave my seat.
With my PREMI come in, but she said, what did you do to this man?
Oh?
I just couldn't believe it because I was nothing but a very good friend to this man, like he did this.
But even if I had dumped him.
You know, yeah, sure, it's it. Do you think that they treated it with the gravitask that it deserved that initial thing, like did it go up with a chain or was she kind of like.
Yeah, she was just the first person I think that was there. And I don't want a huge amount of like I'm not angry at it. It was just completely put in the wrong place, like crazily, like I shouldn't have been sitting in that room.
I shouldn't have been speaking to her about it.
Yeah, completely mishandled, I think at the very beginning.
But so then you've handed it over to the police. What does she say is going to happen from that point?
Not much so Chris came in and gave his statement. So we've been there for a very long time.
At that point, I'm much better to have Chris there, I imagine, Well, you need an ally or no.
Well, because she kept with Chris there, she much more will. I almost left because then I was still getting a lot of seeing the images I didn't want to see, Like, why we.
Have to see them again? I've seen them. I don't want to see them again.
But it was better for Chris to be that yet absolutely in support of me. That was a mistake, I guess, but I didn't realize it would be so awful. But then afterwards, look, I still left thinking, you know, the cops have a really hard job.
Sometimes I make jokes, you know, I think something's going to happen. I was like, you know, the.
Wheels will turn things good. Things are going to happen for us when we walked out.
So in the meantime, I imagine that every time you go home or it becomes a real topic of inquiry, that Chris is looking at the website to see what's happening, if it's been updated, if there's more pictures, what's happening in real time.
Yeah, look, I think.
That night we were really focused on me, But then we were still worried that, you know, it would get taken down or something and our friends wouldn't have evidence for them.
And so what Chris was doing was going to the website and getting all of the screenshots of our friends. And he had a folder and at this point he'd made this because he's a spreadsheet guy, he's in finance, huge spreadsheet, all of the women he'd found, his names, how they were linked to end, all of the posts, putting them into folders. Just you really want something good to happen, and you trust the police that they will make it happen. But you know, I guess it busy in yourself made yourself feel better still, So that's what, Yes.
That you have an activity in a time where you need to you need You can't be idle. There's no kicking back and relaxing.
No, no, And I think it made Chris feel a lot better, and it made me feel a lot better that Chris was doing that. I wasn't doing it. I could not go to that website.
But your two girlfriends from Manning Bar were also on that side. And was this the point at which you resolved not to tell them because you knew that you had to keep you had to keep things tight.
Yeah, well we thought that when we had gone to the police. The police said no, we can tell whoever we want.
But we think that was odd because if it got back to him, we're all very close friends, then you know that would be it for it.
He'll just rip it all down.
So we decided that we wouldn't say it to anyone then, and then I guess when we later got a lawyer, they just taught us not to.
So yeah, okay, so you left things with the police.
YEP.
At this point, you've done ninety percent of the work, You've worked out who it is, you've gone to the police, you've got the images, you know that these two of your other friends involved. You've left it with them, and then they come back to you a little while later. And what did they say to you.
Well, I think just before that we'd realized that that like Andy had been making threats to me, and so he was saying things like I'm going to wait inside her house until she comes in and I'm not going to say the rest of it, but it was going to break me in my own bed, things like that.
Right, So he's saying that on on.
That and yeah, and I know where she works, I know where she lives. I'm coming to get that slot. Just you guys, wait and so or I'm going to put her in a van as she walks home. He knows where I live, He's been to my house, he's been to my job. So we wrote to the police and said, you know these threats and I feel like ratscheating up.
I think that you need to do something at it, and they didn't get back.
To us, and so that we did get a lawyer after that because we just thought all that.
Now that lawyer you got is quite amazing. Yeah, how did things change once you got her on board?
So when we first got her on board, really she couldn't do much. In about July ish I got a call and it was from the same police officer and she just told me that the case was going to be suspended unless something else came up.
Devastating, yeah, angering, yeah, infuriating, unbelievable. Have I left out it? I left out I'm imagining that I am you.
Yeah, And like you know, between that time, we still had this person who'd sent us the email originally that private investigator.
He had found the address of who was posting them and it was his address.
We knew, and his address, and he had the phone he was using, and it was the phone that he was spending all this information. We kept sending it to the police. He was happy to speak to the police, and.
Just no one, no one cared to do it.
And so we're getting more and more, like we already were very certain but you think it's going in the right direction and it's going in a completely different direction.
Well, you know, when you're in law abiding person, your first port of call is the police, and you kind of think that the police are there to fix things when people have broken laws. But that wasn't the case. So what did What did you do when the police said that they weren't going to go any further.
Well, first, I cried so sad. He was just so surprised, and I looked up what suspended meant, because.
I'm just like, I know what spend this means in English, but I thought, what does.
It mean in legally legal talk?
Yeah, and then we just called our lawyer immediately, and you know, she is a gem.
And we had already been a bit worried that it wasn't going anywhere. I still had a very positive attitude, but it was just in case it wasn't.
Our lawyer had given us the name of a.
Forensic investigator, and I think he used to be in the police, and so what he does is he looks at all of the evidence or he finds it for himself, and then he puts together a report.
I think that's much more palatable for the police.
All right, because it's it's in the language, and.
I think because he used to be a police officer or he's been in that area, it has more backing. It means more than our silly spreadsheet. And so that had already been going. So I remember when I got that suspending phone call. I said to her because I was desperate, I said, oh, but we've already got We've got this man doing something.
We've paid him a.
Little bit of money because this preliminary report, but he'll do a real one like and she just said, yes, send it on through if you get it, And so I was like.
Okay, all right, So how much does all of that cost? So you've now got a lawyer, Yeah, you've got the forensic tech guy, you're getting reports made, You're in I imagine almost daily contact with your lawyer. How much money have you been spending on it?
In the end, it cost is around twenty thousand dollars to get this all done.
Do you get victims of crime compensation? Is any of that covered?
Or I tried. I tried for it's called reparations, and so the.
Victims Services person put me onto them and they denied it.
So no, did they give you grounds or.
It's just a knock back. No, yeah, just knock back, all right.
So now with your forensic guy and the lawyer, you can go back to the police and you've got a comprehensive report. Then so you do that and then what happens.
Yeah, so the lawyer sends them a letter. It was a very strongly worded letter. It was great, you know, legal legal person, and it just said they demand for the case to be reopened.
Here is this extra evidence we expect to hear back by this time. And then that was on.
It was maybe five days after that I got this very strange call at school and I picked it up because it was from a random number and that was always the police for me, and it was just a police officer, so lovely. But he told me that it had landed on the right desk. Now it had someone would be in contact with me. Now. It just it was a nothing phone call except to say, don't go and do the complaint you're going to put in somewhere, do you know what I mean? Oh? Okay, It just said we got your thing. It has gone to a detective. Now they will be in contact and so what a shift five days. I think between Yah, it's two things, and I was just ecstatic.
I could not believe it.
Yeah, because finally something was happening, something had shifted.
I just yeah, incredible.
But also in this time, so this really tight core group of people that you've been traveling through life with, you've not been having contact with them. You've been avoiding them, the girls because you don't want to tip off Andy about what's happening, and Andy for obvious reasons. But how is that to be suddenly estranged from those people who've been such a significant part of your life.
Look, it was very difficult, I think, to stop seeing your friends. We just weren't sure that if we saw them we wouldn't tell them.
You know, it was me, Chris and I. Sorry. We talked about it.
I would say almost every day, if not every second day, whether we should tell them.
You know, Chris was watching that.
Website to make sure he wasn't threatening them, and he never was. But you just worry that something will happen to them.
And they won't have known about it.
However, we were told very strongly from our lawyers, and thankfully they did to not say anything. But you just can't hang around with your friends. So we didn't, so we just pulled back from everyone. We just hang out by ourselves. This kind of took over our life at this point.
You must have been scared.
Oh yeah, I was, honest. I was terrified all the time. You know.
There's times where I meant to be at school by myself on the weekend.
Maybe to check something or be on some kind of function or something. I wouldn't go. We bought cameras for the house.
I wore an Apple watch that would tell Chris when I arrived to school and when I got home, like, I wouldn't even keep it was summer, and I wouldn't keep the windows open.
Just in case I was in a different room.
Because the things that Andy had wrote about me were so graffic and they seemed so.
Real in nature that his ability to.
Do it, and I reckon, I look, I like to say this, but I reckon I.
Could take him. If I saw would be coming at me, they'd be hiding in my house. I don't think. I don't know, one can be prepared for that.
So and also because he knew you, Yeah, yeah, so that's got another element of it as well.
And well he lived nearby as well, so I used to see people with a beard and the same kind of gait of walk, and I would just run. I just was so scared that, yeah, we would be surprised. And like me and Chris, we slept with a knife next to the bird because we just thought things of him coming in, or he's been talking to three hundred.
Men and passing them up on the idea of raping me.
Yeah, right, And he was giving out our phone numbers in these weird groups that the investigator was in, and you don't know if he's given out your address and he's made some other men I don't know that you don't recognize.
So I was just terrified.
And in that time, you haven't bumped into him, but then you do.
Yeah, we were quite lucky.
I guess we weren't going out as much, so that might be why we didn't bump into him as well.
But yeah, we were going to.
This it's like a football festival down the road, and we knew there was a chance.
You know.
It's just one of those things that everyone in the Inner West kind of community.
Yeah, and nice. It's got stools and stuff like that.
And so I said to Chris, I won't come first, you go and then let me hear.
It's like, and I'll come after, just in case.
And I think, because I can see Chris because we have we can follow each other on our iPhones because we were so freaked out. He just arrives and I get a message that he immediately runs into Andy.
And he just runs up gives him a massive hug, and just.
Andy hugs Chris.
Yeah.
Yeah, and just like right to see you mate, like normal.
Like absolutely normal, like more than normal because we hadn't seen him for a while at that point, you know, super friendly. Yeah, And so he messaged me and he told me that he would be there and like you can make the decision to.
Come or not.
And it just pissed me off because my other friends are already there. We went part of that we had rated from kind of that group at that point. I had another group of.
Friends and I was like, you know what, I'm going to go down there. And he did the same thing to me.
You know, we hugged, We talked about our life and you know, he asked me about my school and the house and.
Yeah, he looked you in your eyes, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, like like nothing nothing at.
All, And what did you feel.
The weird thing is that it still was just my friend, Andy. You know, you're so angry, You're so angry, and.
Chris was there with me, obviously, and you know this man is saying these things, but you look him in the eyes and it's still the friend you've been friends with for ten years. It did not make any sense that they were still at all the same person.
All right, But at this stage, I guess he's still compart mentalized, even though academically you know that it's him in your heart when you see him, it's your friend. But then the police call you again and they have news for you about yeah doing a raid. Yeah, yeah, and it happened.
Yeah, yeah, they did the raid. So I got a call at school.
I was teaching, Thank Christ, I was teaching my year twelve, So in my lab I have a big glass wall, and I had already told them because I knew it was happening that day that I might need to pop out for a personal reason, just like them, just for.
A phone call. They're all working.
I just pop around to the window where they can't hear, and she just said, yeah, we went in.
He was there. We got everything.
There was the computers, there was hard drives, there was USBs, it was all there. He gave us the passwords, Oh is it in with us now?
And I just you don't.
Know, you just and how is that feeling?
It was a relief because apparently if he doesn't give the passwords up, they can just put him in jail.
So you have to do those things. So it was just about him being there, but the massive high of relief that you have. But also I think.
We always believed it was him, but it's just another loss, isn't it.
I just felt like, oh my god, yeah.
Yeah, that it was not even through all of it, I'm sure there was a part of you that was like, let this not be him, Let it not be him.
Yeah, just yeah, still unbelievable.
And then this is I also find this unbelievable. It went to court, Yeah, yes, yes, And in court was it during the process of the court that you met with the twenty six other women that yeah, were also on the side stween.
That and the court, there was all sorts of weird things where the CDPP, the prosecutor, we'd have this many charges and then they thought, well, actually it's not porn of you, it's your face, and you have no right to privacy of your face. So we're going to drop the charges to this, then we're going to aggrevate them. They went on for two years of this, like doing and throwing. So by the time we got to court, we're just I was so excited for it to just done so when we got there, though, by then I had told many of the women.
There's a lot more to Hannah's story. Right after this short break, we dive deeper into how Hannah finally revealed the truth to her friends, the ones who were also on the website will be right back. So you told Jess and Rachel.
I told several others as well.
Right, but these were your dear friends.
Yeah, I had told them.
And how was that? How was that conversation?
Was awful? Because we pulled back. It was weird. They knew something was wrong, and you know.
One of them was in a car going somewhere and I didn't want to tell her then, but she I think she was going off seas who knows she was doing something that meant it was either now or never, And you just don't know how to tell them. So I would just recount what happened to me and just not say that it was Andy, and then say that it was Andy and what had happened, and then say and I'm.
Really sorry to tell you.
You're sitting down as everything you got someone with you, it's also you two and then would asked to get sent their things, and you just try and prepare them for what they're about to see because it's I.
Mean, Rachel's one was called, let's rate Rachel. And it was just like a born. It was just awful.
And I think the shock of that is so hard, and you're very I mean, they were in shock when I told them. But yeah, it's terrible, terrible to be that kind of messenger of awful news.
And also the I mean because it's cost you so much. It's cost you that year of friendship minimum minimum, it's cost you, I imagine, trust on all sorts of levels. So when you went to court and when he was sentenced, well, two things I found really interesting what he said when he was door stopped by a journalist on the way to court.
Yeah she's our friends.
Wow, Oh is she?
Yeah?
Yeah?
So she was the producer of the Australian story.
Right, Well, my good friend's sisters, So that that's how she it was important. So she was there both days, and she was really on our like she wanted to this to be a good like a story. She thought it was important, and so that's why it was on the news both times.
Yeah.
Right, she was on our side because she knew what had happened to us, you know.
And yeah, when he said it was what did he say? I can't remember.
He said it was my dark So he's walking into court and the reporter says to him, you know, why did you do it? And he says something.
Like dark part of my sight.
Yeah, the dark part of my psyche manifesting, which I also thought was an interesting answer because he didn't at that point, he didn't try to make an excuse. He didn't. Yeah, but he didn't say he was sorry.
No.
But then he was asked how he would feel seeing the women in court and how many of you were going to be there?
There was I think eight or nine that were giving their victim impact statements, and there was the families.
Of others, right, And he said, I have to do it to see the women.
Yeah you can read that either way, can't you? Like it's I think he has to do it because it's legally he has to do it right.
I mean, I've got a good story with that. Sorry.
When all the girls met a bit earlier, so I brought my mom. I had a lot of friends from Mannipa that came. The police and the victim services woman took us into the voyer to wait together and go up. He unfortunately came in at that time. He saw us all sitting there. I was kind of close to him. He looked at my partner, Chris, and he told.
Chris he was sorry. Oh, and then he got up in the lift. I told him to turn around.
But I just thought it was very interesting that you pick the only male partner there to say sorry too instead of me. I was his friend, Chris wasn't even his good friend.
Do you think because he couldn't look at you? Or do you think through his own admitted history of violent pornography, we know that that diminishes women. Yeah, in the eyes of the man. Do you think it was? Which do you think it was?
Or I don't think he was a range Because when we were in court, and I find this very interesting as well, we all sat like all the women sat very close. All the front row was the women you know, and we knew each other, we had met now before. We were holding hands very first, because there was two different ones. The first one he sat in our eye and if you looked at him, he didn't put his head down. He would look right back at you. There was no shame there. He looked very fine, like this circle, like not smiling or anything.
He's not like But how long was the court case? By the way, it was just two days, two days, two days, two long days because he pleaded guilty or.
Guilty, yeah, all of the charges, so twenty six women and then they rolled up all the charges, so I had something like fifty something of them, but they rolled them all into one charge. But when they were reading that at the beginning of the court case as well, they have to read out every single one, and it went for about forty minutes, just right, It's crazy. But when he got up to give his whatever they call it, my friend had said to me, you know, I don't want to be in this room when he does.
He has nothing to say to me. Does anyone want to do that with me? And I was like, I feel that way too.
I don't want to hear his reasons for doing it. And I don't want to hear that he's sorry. So we got up and we left.
My partner stayed in there, and really.
All he was saying, and it came up later, is that he thought it would just be an internet thing. It was online harm, not real world hard. And the judge did not like that in the end remarks that she made right, And he was giving out our full names, our number addresses, like were the subways we live in, and our occupations.
So I don't know, and I.
Got all those messages from random men. It's real world harmed.
He's done.
So he said this after he's heard all the victim impact statements. Yeah, and what did you say in your victim impact statement?
Look, it's quite long, I guess.
You know, they ask you to go through the ways monetarily, emotionally.
And all of these things. I think the big takeaways from mine, other than the money and stuff like that.
Is it was a definite harm. It's done to Chris and Mine's relationship. You know, taken these years from us. It's three years at this point from us where you know, our friends are having babies and they're getting married. And the other one I think is that I don't know if I'll ever make a male friend again, I think that might be done for me for my life now after having happened.
I don't see how I could ever do that and fully trust someone without thinking that this could happen again.
The like complete shock to me as someone that I thought was pretty good at that's like vetting people that this could fly kind of under my radar.
Has been like world rocking.
So it did occur to me to wonder about the effect it's had on your relationship with Chris. Because your partner is and you've been with him so steadfastly for thirteen years. He's at once your protector, he's your friend, he's your confidante. He's also supposed to be your lover. How do you navigate all of that going forward? When you've seen the most abhorrent side of men, and even though he's a most honorable man and a champion of you to the point where I find it quite moving and beautiful, how do you as a woman do that?
I think, in my smart brain, you've got to realize it and is he has to be an outlier, even though that you've seen so many men on that website, there were so many men there were so many threads about Sydney girls, people being their actual needs being posted on there like crazy, the amount of people from Sydney that were on there, And you have to I guess you work through it a lot, like obviously I go to therapy now and stuff like that. But Chris, there has to be some good ones, just the same way as I guess there are going to be some really evil ones. And he has been so strong for me through it, and you know, such a support and not just a support, just so overtly against what Andy has done and been a support for the women and spend all of his time for those other women as well.
So you know, I guess you just got to remember that, you know what what.
Told. Do you think it's taken on him? Because it was? It's hard to tell with him because he's just so steadfast. What do you think it's cost him?
I don't think that you can look at that website.
For that much time and not have some kind of yea emotional I think it was probably harder on him at the very beginning, you know, very shocking. He had, as he said in the Australian story, like he had a panic attack.
He's never had born things like that.
I think what we are really good at together is talking about this, like we have never kind of.
Kept it to ourselves.
We always talked about how we were feeling together, and we always approached it together. So I think he's doing well, but you do have to just constantly check in and just make sure because that website is so toxic that time spent on it is. But I do think that as we got this resolution, it's very I don't know what the word is. It's not good, but it's like vindicating all of that work he put in, you know, all of.
The time, all of the pushing.
It really led to this result, and the result is incredible.
The result was he got.
Five and a half years non parole nine years older. Yeah, which is.
Like unheard of, unheard of.
And we were told and the police select to say that they didn't tell us this, but I don't know these words. Before they told me this, he was he was likely to get a non custodial sentence and.
Then which means he doesn't go to jail, and.
Then he would get something called a community corrections order. I didn't know what that was, so I.
Looked it up, but physically, you just you go don't go to jail.
You go to jail, but you just got to be good for a little bit. So I thinking that was going to happen that day, and all the girls did because I told them that that's what I was told. We were just shocked when she read it out, like we crah.
Like there was because I think the lawyers knew. Obviously they knew.
And that second day in court, he looked completely different because he'd been to jail for a week.
They put him in jail between two ones. His head was down, he.
Was in his a jump suit, and so we were still thinking he wasn't going to jail. We don't know what we're thinking. We decided even a week would be amazing. And then when she said that, like we gasped and everyone cried, and we had girls over the other aisle and we ran into them because we were told was chill.
We ran into the middle and like hugged and it was just like, I'll never.
Forget it, And how is he did you think to clock him in that moment looked to him.
He did nothing. Nothing. I think I think he I think.
Maybe the lawyers all knew that this was happening. But I mean, we're not any real part of it. It turns out these things you don't get told anything. No, so he had no reaction and then then.
But very I mean, it was a vindicating It was a vindication for you. And also because so often the the victims of sexual crimes are suffer twice. Women suffer twice minimum twice, because there's the crime, there's what you have to take away with and live with, and then there's also this this whole the strata of how you're broken down as a victim as whatever.
Yeah.
Yeah, and you were believed yeah and it yeah, yeah, so shocking, and I think it was very vindicating.
But as you said as well, you know, the judge read out all of the things he'd said, and she was trying to make a point that these things deserve the.
Amount of time. But you're sitting there just very like, I.
Don't know if the other women had heard all of the things, because I have put together.
But you're like, well this is quite really scotoitizing.
Yes, they have yes, heard it, like yeah, oh, it's just I don't know.
And his family was there and they.
Were, oh, oh my god, this is Australia's Criminal Code was amended in August of this year to sentence anyone guilty of creating non consensual deep fake sexually explicit material to up to seven years in prison. Do you think it was a result of your case.
No, it was already on the cards, so I don't know if it's that specific one. But because Andy spent so long posting about me, I think it was two years, two and a half years. The very end of my stuff would fall under the new stuff that right, But it was so few as opposed to the six hundred other ones he posted me that they just went, no, do it for the old one.
He's going to get more anyway, right, So no, I think that was already coming in. But I think it's so important.
I hope it means that women don't have to or men who have this happened to them don't have to absolutely battle through to get any kind of justice, because it shouldn't mean, you know, all that money, all that time we spent and having these kind of connections we had to this lawyer and all sorts of stuff, that you get justice for twenty six women.
And also you had someone by your side, and.
That's exactly right as well.
I mean, you just everything had to fall in place for this one to happen.
And this online person they got in contact with me.
Just that's amazing, isn't it. Yeah, and actually tried you twice just to under an alias as well. Just click on this link.
Yeah, and he still keeps in contact with me today. I mean, he was part of the story too, you know, just is a genuinely good person.
So, Hannah, even though and his work, his life, work's been shut down on the internet, the Internet being what it is, these images of you, these adopted images are out there.
Yeah, So Chris and I pay for a subscription service and it kind of searches the whole internet for my face, and so quite often they.
Still pop up.
They're on different websites now, so obviously they're not Andy because he's in prison, but they're just people that have copied them. They're bots hosting them to other porn sites. And when they do pop up, they have my name on.
Them as well.
And so the way we have dealt with it is we ask the police, and the police have been able to take most of them down, but they're only taking the ones down that we've found and so.
It's like playing whack a mole.
Yeah, I mean, and then new ones turn up that I haven't even seen, so whether they were on a different website that we've never seen before.
I mean, it's just constant. So for me, it's going to be something I think I can tend with for my whole life.
So I guess if I have children, or if I get a new job, it's always going to be something that I have to explain to people because they will.
Be there forever.
Hey, what happened. I'm imagining you're because you're a school teacher. You had to tell the school.
Yeah, I told the school immediately.
So on that first day after I'd gone to the police, because I just thought they could just send them to the school, and I need them to know that's not of me.
So I immediately went to the school.
I'm very lucky. You know, it's an independent school and they have just had my back the whole way through. You know, they immediately, well not immediately understand it. You have to explain to people. I find this is the worst part about this kind of deep fake pawn.
I guess on a professional level is you have.
To explain what it looks like it's not you, you know, and it's damaging in these ways to you, and you've got it. It's just such an awkward conversation to have, you know.
And then of course your students.
Yeah, so no, I did that at the very beginning, so they were knew right at the get go, and then the girls only knew right before the Australian story.
Came out, right, And how is it now with them?
Oh, I mean they're just amazing, you know.
They I have like right now, I'm just looking at they're like, I got, you know, this massive bunch of flowers. I got this anonymous bunch of flowers from the girls just saying you know.
Oh, it's just the sweetest cut ever. I can't read out our cry, but you.
Know this is from your I don't know.
They just put it on my desk, the bengest thing I've ever read, and with a bunch of flowers.
This was the day after I came back from court.
Okay, dear miss.
Brundy, we hope you are well. We wanted to tell.
You that we think what you did was really brave and we really look up to you and how you were able to speak out it really inspired us to be strong and not stay quiet. Thank you for being such a great role model. You're the best science teacher and we love you so much.
Oh it's so nice, isn't it. But I got lots of things like that, and you just it was the right view.
So yeah, do you know what, You're just so lovely And I don't mean that in an angel sense of lovely. I mean that you're just a valiant, beautiful, honorable woman who is deeply loved, and I hope the future rises to meet you the way that you deserve.
Thank you.
You may crying now, Well, I think what you're doing is so important if someone who's listening is in a similar situation. Because your first contact with the police was unsatisfactory, but subsequently it was extremely satisfactory, what would you suggest to someone who's kind of all, let's see about how to proceed pursuing justice for themselves or even to get an end to something.
Yeah, it's a very difficult question.
I think since my story went to air, I've had a lot of women contact me on Instagram or Facebook or things all over the place with the same problem.
I don't know. I hope that because of us going and saying.
These things and doing these news reports and everything, that maybe they'll have a different experience, and I I would say, just don't give up.
But I think that's really difficult if you're in a different position to me. I think I just really hope that you know, they have.
A different experience to me, because I don't think you should have to.
Fight for this, and I don't think you should have to tell them don't.
Give up, because it's actually too hard for a lot.
Did you at any point think about giving up?
No, I was so angry.
Chris and I am a very we're the same type of person in the way that we were so so mad about this that we would have spent anything to get him in that.
Jail, you know, righteous anger.
Yeah, we were just you know, how can this person have done this to us? So I guess I would say, I hope they have a different experience, you know, stay strong. I would let other people know about it. Don't be embarrassed about it. People say they would be embarrassed, but for me, it's like, I don't know what you're embarrassed about.
They're not photos of you, you know, they're not. And even if they were photos of you. They shouldn't be spread around the internet.
But you just have to stay strong and you know, don't be ashamed of this. It's it's going to happen to a lot more people, and you know, seek help, get help from people, and you know, stay strong.
What does Chris want to happen?
What does Chris want to happen?
Yeah?
What does he want?
What does he want at the moment?
Yeah, what is he want?
He's always looking to buy another house us from.
I don't want actually maybe not bad to leave the house.
Yeah, so well, look that doesn't future, you know, just a nice one and just a lot of time to spend with our friends and family and not have it this being the constant I'm doing things like this now, it's not the constant talk of our every conversation anymore. Like it's very infrequent, and it's it's lighter now, and you know, we get to joke about it. So I guess that's what we're both looking forward to, just you know, regular life, even if it's squatted with these times, you know, getting back to.
Law beautiful, a simple.
Life, Yeah, a simple and boring life.
Well, I hope you, I hope you have a really boring life. That's my wish for you. Hannah is undeniably remarkable, isn't she. Her three year battle for justice, despite countless setbacks, highlights the challenges of navigating a legal system that's still playing catch up with complexity of Internet crimes. Through her courage and determination, Hannah has created a lasting legacy, a landmark case. In fact, it marked the first time in Australia that someone was charged with sharing digitally altered intimate images or deep fake pornography. This case has paved the way for a growing number of similar cases involving the non consensual uploading of digitally altered sexually explicit images. At Andrew Hayler's sentencing, Judge Jane Culver described the decision as an appropriate vehicle for general deterrence. Thanks to Hannah and her devoted and honorable partner and the other brave women who stood up in court, future victims of AI driven crimes now have hope for justice. The executive producer of No Filter is Naima Brown and the senior producer is Grace Ruvrey. Audio production is by Jacob Brown and I'm your host Kate lane Brook. Thank you for listening.
