Ryan Kotynski scattered his former partner's name across adult websites, inviting men to have rough sex with her. Credit:Jorge Branco A detective from the Acacia Ridge Criminal Investigation Branch had phoned to say they had a suspect and enough evidence to execute a search warrant on her tormenter. But it's only now, as the mother-of-one picks up the phone and nervously dials, that she learns the identity of the man so intent on revenge a court heard he effectively made her a prisoner in her own home. It's Ryan Kotynski, the detective says, naming Mrs Night's boyfriend of some two years from 2007. "F--- off," she says, startled.

Robyn leaves the Brisbane District Court after her former partner was jailed. Credit:Jorge Branco An hour passes, she takes 10,000 steps round and round in circles, captured on her fitness tracker. She goes to bed but barely sleeps a wink: Nervous, anxious, angry, relieved, nauseous. Another 14 months later Mrs Night recounts the conversation in a courtroom, her voice quivering with emotion as her 42-year-old former boyfriend is jailed. "I felt physically sick that a man who had said he loved me was capable of doing something so vile and grotesque," she says, husband River's hand a rod of support on her back.

"I really didn't know how to feel. After four years his reign of terror was over." Ten metres away, bald and bearded, large frame filling a dark, pin-striped suit, her ex awaits his punishment. Head slightly bowed, Kotynski sits almost completely still as the woman whose phone number, address and photo he scattered on adult dating profiles across the internet relives the whole sorry ordeal. Her fake online personas said she was an "extreme no limit slave pig" with "no rights whatsoever". Online, she might have been identified c---pigrobyn78 or a woman with a rape fantasy, who even wanted gang rape or torture. "Come rape me", "I like it rough", "ruin me", the fake profiles on websites such as AdultFriendFinder and HomemadeBDSM said.

Some of them still do. Over three years, some 50 men turn up on the doorstep, even as Robyn is pregnant with her first child. She installs security cameras, a lock on the gate and signs that would be odd if you didn't know the horrible history behind it. Signs and security put up by Robyn Night and her husband in response to dozens of visits from men expecting sex. Random messages appear on her phone from numbers she doesn't recognise, asking for sex. Vulgar notes are dropped in the letterbox. Kotynski, out for revenge because he thought she cheated all those years ago, created profile after profile and handed over the password to other men to do what they would.

In court, his defence says he was lonely and suffering from anxiety and has been embarrassed by the media attention. Defence barrister Deborah Holliday denies her client made some of the more extreme posts and disowns the disturbing Photoshops superimposing his ex-partner's head onto the body of women in sexual positions. But Judge Leanne Clare says even if that is true, which the Crown does not challenge, she sees little difference between authoring the information and enabling it. "Online invitations to rape and torture and gang rape, it's hard to think of how it could be more chilling," she says. "And the inability to actually do anything about it.

"Police could not stop him." The next day, Mrs Night takes issue with this characterisation, insisting it was a matter of "police would not", instead of could not. She first goes to police in 2011 after that initial terrifying discovery, by a friend, of what was happening online. Twice she is told the police are powerless to act. But once her husband includes the police commissioner and police minister into emailed complaints, things progress rapidly. "It was exceptionally frustrating because it was literally two weeks from when I gave my statement to them and within two weeks they had executed a search warrant and arrested Ryan," she tells Fairfax Media.

After almost four years of helplessness, Kotynski is charged with stalking. Police searching his house for evidence find child pornography on his phone. Then on Friday, Judge Clare sentences the Redland Bay man to four-and-a-half years in prison, but he can apply for parole as early as May 3 next year. She brushes away defence concerns about embarrassment suffered over media attention, kicked off by Fairfax Media in October 2015. It's ironic, she says, that the exposure of his crimes might cause emotional pain when "what you did was deliberately expose an entirely innocent woman to much greater and far more persistent psychological harm".

But it's not over for Mrs Night. Many of the websites objectifying and endangering her are still there for anyone to see but thankfully the knocks on the door have stopped. Mostly, she wants to use her awful experience to continue her push for nationwide revenge-porn laws. Mrs Night accepts her case is unique but wants a defined offence to punish those who publish naked photos or videos of their former partners online and those who engage in the objectionable practice of sharing them. "Realistically, he shouldn't be on parole in 14 months' time," she says. "He put me through absolute hell. He should at least serve three years with non-parole. People shouldn't be able to use your image to humiliate and torture you.

"I feel relieved and I can close the book on it but I'll always be looking over my shoulder."