Mother of girl nearly sold on the dark web gives warning to parents
By Karli Barnett
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ATLANTA, Georgia (WANF) — A Jasper County man is accused of trying to sell a 16-year-old girl’s personal information on the dark web for the purpose of having her kidnapped.
That girl’s mother spoke exclusively to Atlanta News First to share a warning to others. For the sake of protecting her daughter, the station is keeping her identity hidden.
“I’m always worried about other places– when you go on vacation, when you go here and go there–but it happened here, right around us,” the mother told us.
She said the FBI came knocking on her door June 29th of this year to deliver news they never expected.
“I’ve heard about the dark web, you know, in movies, but I didn’t really know exactly what it was,” she explained.
Investigators told her a tipster, who lived all the way in England, called the anonymous FBI tip line to say this woman’s daughter was in danger.
They had uncovered a disturbing dark web advertisement.
“There were two pictures, and it was from our family vacation the year before,” the mother explained. “On the picture, on the ad, it said this ‘item’, as they called, it was put for sale. If they would purchase this item, which was my daughter, then they would tell where we lived, where she frequented, and that they knew everything about her.”
The man accused of posting that was Kelly Garrett Ivey, 41.
The mother said they knew his name, because they had attended the same church at one point. However, she said they did not converse outside of that.
“We were not his friend,” she said. “We were his social media friend, along with the other people at Rock Springs [Church].”
The church confirmed he was a member there for a time and had not attended for the last year and a half.
The mother said Ivey took the photos from their family’s Facebook page, which was set to a private account.
“He stole our personal pictures that we thought were safe,” she said tearfully.
Ivey was arrested by Jasper County Sheriff’s deputies and eventually indicted in August on the charges of:
-Cruelty to Children
-Trafficking of Persons for Sexual Servitude
-Criminal Attempt to Commit a Felony, including kidnapping
The arrest report said Ivey “attempted to sell information about a 16-year-old female, home address as well as places she regularly attends on the dark web in order for her to be abducted, assaulted or otherwise harmed.”
The ad was published in June and was on the web for four days.
This mother believes in that time a higher power was protecting her from being identified.
“My daughter’s vehicle had broke down three weeks before that. She couldn’t drive that,” she said. “And then my daughter ended up changing the color of her hair, and she got her hair cut shorter. It was just like everything that Kelly Ivey knew of her, God took care of.”
Their daughter was homeschooled, and they said they thought they had done everything to keep her safe.
“I don’t want people to get out of it, ‘The church is a bad place.’ Because church isn’t a bad place. There’s predators everywhere,” she explained.
However, she noted that people should not let their guard down, even in places considered safe.
“If I can protect one person to tell the story, I don’t want anybody, anybody, to go through what we are going through right now.”
If you or someone you know could be in danger, you can call the National Human Trafficking Hotline at 888-373-7888.
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