A Mobile County woman crowned Miss Mobile Bay is speaking publicly about years of manipulation and coercion by an online predator that began when she was just 12 years old, describing an ordeal that eventually drew in the FBI and reshaped how she now spends much of her time as an advocate against child exploitation and sex trafficking.
Bre Vigor, a Mary G. Montgomery High School graduate who now runs track for the University of Mobile, first spoke about her experience during the Distinguished Young Women program in Mobile County, telling judges and an audience that included her mother, Cricket Vigor, that her life had at times resembled “a horror film” because she was “a survivor of an online child predator.” It was the first time she had described what happened to her outside of conversations with her family and law enforcement.
According to the family, the ordeal began in sixth grade, when Bre, then newly active on Instagram and Snapchat, accepted a friend request from an unfamiliar account. What started as a casual exchange — “How was your day?” — continued for roughly two weeks before the person on the other end began pressuring her for a nude photograph. When Bre searched the person’s username online, she said the search results included a chilling threat: that reporting the account would lead to her family being harmed.
Believing she had no other option, Bre sent the photo. She said the man then used that image as leverage to demand more, eventually taking control of her social media accounts and requiring her to appear on video chat late at night, often until 2 or 3 a.m., before she got up a few hours later for school. Family members later came to believe the disrupted sleep schedule was a deliberate part of a grooming process meant to wear down her ability to resist.
The man, who the family said lived on the West Coast, maintained contact for roughly three years. During a national dance competition in Las Vegas in 2014, another parent warned families in a changing area that a man had been pacing outside the door; security removed him, and Bre later received a text saying he had been close to her that day. She and her mother believe he intended to abduct her in person during that trip.
The pattern of secrecy ended after a routine phone check at home. Cricket Vigor said she noticed a contact saved under the name “Daddy” on her daughter’s phone and grew suspicious because her husband, a fire captain, did not use the messaging app in question. Investigators and advocacy groups have noted that traffickers sometimes use similar language to label victims, and the discovery prompted Cricket to begin documenting the messages and eventually reach out for help.
An early report to a sheriff’s deputy was classified as harassing communications and did not lead to further action, the family said. A detective at a local Child Advocacy Center later connected the Vigors with the FBI, which began monitoring the situation and warned the family that the man remained dangerous. Even after the family sought outside help, they said the man continued attempting to track Bre’s location through Snapchat and at one point accessed a therapist’s files to delete records related to her case.
Bre has said the prolonged stress and secrecy contributed to depression, self-harm and suicidal thoughts during her early teenage years. She has also said that school programs at the time focused heavily on drug and alcohol dangers but offered little guidance on how to recognize or respond to online grooming, a gap she now works to address through public speaking.
The man was never criminally charged, according to the family, but the contact stopped after federal agents visited him; he left the country in 2019. A second attempt at contact soon followed from a different individual, later identified by federal authorities as Garnett James Lloyd, a North Carolina man in his late 40s who posed online as a teenage girl interested in buying formal dresses Bre and friends had listed for sale.
Because the family and the FBI agent already assigned to Bre’s case recognized the pattern quickly, an agent assumed her online identity and continued the conversation with Lloyd, who requested increasingly inappropriate photos and offered money for explicit images, according to a U.S. Department of Justice announcement on the case out of the Southern District of Alabama. When the requests were refused, Lloyd threatened to distribute doctored images and to contact Bre’s friends and family. He was arrested at his home days later and was ultimately sentenced to five years in federal prison on a cyberstalking charge.
In the years since, Bre has built a record of academic and athletic achievement, serving as an Azalea Trail Maid and vice president of the National Honor Society at Mary G. Montgomery High School, earning track scholarship offers from programs around the country and continuing to compete at the University of Mobile. She was crowned Miss Mobile Bay in October 2019 and, with pageants paused during the pandemic, has used the extended time with her title to focus on advocacy work.
That work includes launching a nonprofit, Stopping Traffick, aimed at raising money for organizations that assist trafficking survivors, including the Rose Center in Mobile, and eventually funding scholarships for young women recovering from abuse or trafficking. Bre has said she wants to help survivors gain the education and job skills needed to rebuild their lives after leaving dangerous situations.
Mobile has repeatedly been cited by state and national organizations as among Alabama’s most significant hubs for human trafficking activity, a statistic Bre now cites often in talks with students and parents about online safety. She has said she hopes to compete for the Miss Alabama title and continue raising awareness of trafficking and grooming risks regardless of the outcome.
Anyone who suspects a child is being trafficked or groomed online, or who wants more information about warning signs and resources, can contact the Rose Center in Mobile at 251-298-3671, the Child Advocacy Center at 251-432-1011, or the National Human Trafficking Hotline at 888-373-7888.