Online bullies tell Sheffield mum with 120 tattoos her children should be taken into care
“There were comments saying how disgusting I am, how I'm mentally unwell, that my children need to be taken into care”
A mum with 120 tattoos has revealed the extent of the abuse she faces from online trolls, including claims her children should be taken into care.
Carly Ejogbamu, aged 39, got her first tattoo six years ago after the end of a previous relationship and instantly loved it.
She got her first face ink - a moon above her eyebrow - in 2020 and then bought her own tattoo gun and began her body art journey.
She now has more than 120 tattoos, multiple piercings and lip fillers. She has nine inkings on her face.
After posting a selfie with her and her husband Aesop Ejogbamu, 40, Carly received thousands of comments calling her a “freak”.
Carly, from Sheffield, said: “I’m not a very technical person and didn't realise my Facebook profile was set to public, so I just shared a selfie of me and my husband.
“I came back to my phone 20 minutes later and there were thousands of comments calling me ‘it’ and ‘a freak’.
“There were comments saying how disgusting I am, how I'm mentally unwell, that my children need to be taken into care.
“I've had a people tell me that I should kill myself and that they would kill themselves if they looked like me.
“It’s all because I choose to look different.
“I am thick skinned but if it was anybody else it could have really affected their mental health.”
Carly spent £300 on the tattoo gun kit instead of having a wedding party and inked tributes to her husband using it.
She said: "We got married at the registry office and then came home and made dinner, it was such a normal day.
"Instead of having a big party, I bought the gun.”
After the first round of abuse, Carly said she took some time off social media.
The stay-at-home mum told Talk to the Press: “The first time it happened, I was arguing back with them in the comments but that just made it worse.
“It knocked my confidence a bit so I took a break and didn't really post for a while but I started back about four months ago.
“Now I use it.
“I started taking my selfies and captioning them just to trigger them.
“I've just had a new piercing on my face, a bridge, and I've captioned the picture ‘growing old gracefully’.”
The mum isn’t deterred by the comments as her husband and kids, aged one, three, eight and 14, love them.
She said: “My husband loves my tattoos, and now I have covered him with tattoos too.
“He knows what I have been through before and how conservative I had to be, so now he just goes along with whatever I want which is a blessing.
“He is my biggest supporter and argues back with people in the comments but I leave him to do that.
“My kids are the most respectful kids you've ever met, and I never get any complaints about them.”