A TikTok influencer’s affair with a married man cost her $1.75 million in court. Other influencers couldn’t stay away

By Lisa Respers France, CNN

(CNN) — Strangers rallied behind Akira Montague when she took on a woman in court whom she had believed was one of her closest friends.

Montague, a 27-year-old mother of two, won a $1.75 million judgment this month against the TikTok influencer Brenay Kennard, after accusing Kennard of having an affair with Montague’s now-former husband, Tim Montague. A North Carolina jury found Kennard liable for alienation of affection and criminal conversation — that is, for breaking up the marriage and having adulterous sex — in one of the six remaining states where a spouse can still sue a third party for violating a marriage.

Akira Montague’s supporters celebrated the verdict in the courtroom, with some of them in tears as the plaintiff embraced the influencer Regina Terry, who posts as BlackGoddess82 on TikTok.

“It was like a moment of waiting to exhale,” Terry told CNN, her voice cracking with emotion. “In that moment it was like a moment of relief that I helped somebody get their truth out.”

Terry was part of a group of mostly Black female TikTok influencers who amplified Montague’s story on the platform. They had spent more than a year following developments in her case, with many posting new details about the broken marriage and lawsuit as they emerged. Some of them traveled from other states to cover the trial. They posted updates before and after each day’s testimony and during the breaks, giving the event the sort of salacious Hollywood-style social-media coverage that went with the Johnny Depp–Amber Heard libel trial.

Along the way, what began as a parasocial relationship evolved into a bit of a sisterhood among the influencers, which led to them sharing information and coordinating their activities with each other. More than one of them caught the moment during one day of testimony when Montague, who followed her attorney’s advice to not speak publicly, walked by as they were filming and paused so their followers could see she was in good spirits.

Montague was well aware of the group because of their support both on and offline. Terry started a GoFundMe page to raise money for Montague’s legal fees and bought bikes for Montague’s children.

“All of the content creators, we met for the first time and we have been so close ever since,” said Tierra Johnson, known as Barbie on TikTok, who traveled from her home in Houston to see the trial. “We have a lot of supporters and covering this case has changed my life.”

Kennard, who testified that Akira Montague knew about the relationship and had permitted it, told CNN affiliate WRAL that the lawsuit “was nothing but lies.” Kennard and Tim Montague married this year. She did not respond to CNN’s further requests for comment.

Online, viewers criticized many of the influencers for being too involved in the private lives of people they didn’t know. Quanolia Phillips, known on TikTok as Big Show, told CNN that for her the case was “personal” as she too had dealt with infidelity in a past relationship.

“I’m like this shouldn’t happen and it just go unseen, unheard of, because so many of us don’t voice when this thing has happened to us,” she said. “We’re too ashamed or too embarrassed so we just write it off.”

“It was brought to social media for us to see it, and it started on social media,” Phillips said. “And I’m a true believer if we do not want something out there, you would not put it on social media.”

‘Who are they?’

Kennard launched her TikTok account in 2020 and now has close to 3 million followers on the app, as well as audiences on Instagram, YouTube, Facebook and Snapchat. She initially became known as a Christian influencer — her Facebook intro still reads in part “God + Lifestyle + snapchat.” Then she morphed into a more worldly influencer, showing off her elaborately designed fake nails or eating large amounts of food she whipped up, as well as fast food (those who follow her know her fondness for Chipotle), on camera for the video genre known as Mukbang.

But it was her big bosom, on display as she danced braless in one video with her also well-endowed twin sister Karrin, that caught many people’s attention. “I think what interested everybody was that her style and her nails and everything was so over the top. And also, of course, her and her twin had the massive chests,” said Cherish Young, one of the influencers who traveled to cover the trial. “So it made the content just, like, ‘Well, who are they?’ You know, it was hard not to look at, but it was also the confidence of it and just her being very open and honest about ‘Hey, this is my body and I don’t care.’ She was a bubbly personality.”

Kennard’s early videos showed her spending time with Devon Mayo, whom she married in May 2021. She referred to him as “bae,” while posting loving tributes and videos of her cooking for him. Her videos eventually began to include Mayo’s cousin Tim Montague, and Montague’s wife, Akira. They had been married since 2018.

In 2023, Kennard posted multiple videos of the two 20-something couples doing things like going on double dates and generally having fun together. Yet some followers began to note that Tim Montague and Kennard, who had known each other since high school, appeared to be very close. In some videos Kennard seemed to be paying more attention to Montague than to her husband.

“All of a sudden we saw Timothy Montague coming into the picture, which we weren’t exactly sure why it was her, Timothy, and Devon,” said Leah Williams, an influencer who goes by “CaramelLove07” on TikTok. “Then we looked up one day and she had made a video saying, ‘I am divorced.’”

That was in February 2024, and Young said Kennard brushed off questions about her relationship with Tim Montague, saying he was her “manager.” The pair started making videos exclusively together and it became pretty apparent that they were romantically involved.

‘Can we see about getting a document sealed?’

In May 2024, Akira Montague filed suit against Kennard, alleging that Kennard had used their friendship to seduce Montague’s husband. The suit alleged that Kennard would openly flirt with Tim Montague and that the two had even engaged in sex in the Montagues’ marital home.

On her TikTok account, Kennard documented her relationship with Tim Montague, which started as the two often playfully cavorting while in the presence of their respective spouses before it became just the two of them. Once Akira Montague filed her suit, in May 2024, Kennard began to post more about the case, insisting that her former friend’s narrative was not to be believed and that the “truth” would be revealed once the trial happened, though she didn’t offer specifics as to what that might be.

Akira Montague told CNN that if she’d had her way, the case would have been completely private.

“I told my attorney, I don’t know about this. Like, I don’t want it connected to my kids. Can we see about getting a document sealed?” Montague said. “And that wasn’t something that the opposing party wanted.”

Instead, the situation became a sensation in the short-form video world — as did the personal history behind it. In an August 2024 TikTok, Mayo revealed that he and Kennard weren’t actually legally divorced yet, shared that she had dated Tim Montague in high school and that he had also been involved in the past with her twin sister.

Mayo also reportedly shared these details as part of his testimony during the trial.

CNN has reached out to Karrin Kennard, Brenay’s twin sister, for comment.

‘I just hate bullying’

Montague opted not to speak publicly during the legal proceedings. As Kennard kept publishing content about her side of the suit, winning some supporters, other influencers say they were inspired to serve as Montague’s voice, using their accounts to act as citizen journalists.

Phillips did one of her first videos about the whole situation in May, after Terry hosted a TikTok Live about it, during which Kennard, Mayo and Tim Montague joined the stream and turned it into an explosive argument. “I felt like I was Team Akira,” Phillips said. “And I was also fighting for her in a way I did not fight for myself.”

Young, who traveled from Augusta, Georgia, for the trial, said there was a shared sentiment among the influencers that Kennard was bullying Montague, flaunting her relationship with Tim Montague in her face and attempting to control the narrative via her posts on TikTok and Snapchat. Young tried to inject some of the levity she usually uses on TikTok into the videos she made leading up to the case, and she spent the trial delivering crudely drawn “court sketches,” which became popular during the trial.

She is fully aware, however, of how serious the case was for Akira Montague.

“I just hate bullying and I felt like the truth needed to come out,” Young said. “I think that’s why my videos did so well, because I did bring humor to a situation that actually was very tragic and sad.”

“This man abandoned his children,” she added. “You know, a family was ruined, two marriages were ruined. It was actually a very sad situation.”

Katlyn Alexis, aka Lexi on TikTok, said the scene inside of the courtroom was “intense,” especially given Akira Montague’s pain over the betrayal. “It was a lot of emotions, like so many emotions,” Alexis told CNN. “By day three, everyone was in there crying.”

“For them not to know me personally, but to stand up for me when I wasn’t able to stand up for myself, I really appreciated that,” Montague said.

The courtroom victory did not bring the story to an end. Montague also has an ongoing criminal cyberstalking case against Kennard, whose attorney declined to comment on the case.

Terry, with whom Montague shared that hug, said she has been doxed and has received death threats against her and her 12-year-old daughter from fans of Kennard because of her support of Montague, but she has no regrets.

“I didn’t have any expectancy of me even having a conversation with her, and we haven’t had a conversation, but that hug was everything for me,” Terry said. “And it was worth everything that I went through.”

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2025 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.