A 23-year-old Mount Pleasant social media influencer was arrested September 10 on six felony charges connected to the alleged sexual exploitation of minors and was released Sunday on a $1 million bond. Carson Dean Barry faces five counts of third-degree sexual exploitation of a minor and one count of criminal solicitation of a minor, according to South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson. Each charge is a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force investigators with the Mount Pleasant Police Department made the arrest. Investigators from the Attorney General’s Office, Homeland Security Investigations, the Summerville Police Department and the Charleston County Sheriff’s Office assisted. All are members of the state’s ICAC Task Force.
According to the Attorney General’s Office, investigators allege in an affidavit that Barry solicited a minor for sex and possessed files of child sexual abuse material. The case began with a CyberTipline report from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which led investigators to Barry.
Authorities searched Barry’s residence on August 20 and seized a computer tower and two iPhones. According to the affidavit, investigators found on one of the iPhones a 12-second video depicting the sexual assault of a female child between the ages of 2 and 4. The footage was last accessed in early August, per the filing. Investigators linked the phone to Barry through an iCloud account registered to his Gmail and other accounts bearing his name.
Barry was booked into the Al Cannon Detention Center in Charleston County. He posted a total bond of $1 million ($150,000 on each of the five sexual exploitation counts and $250,000 on the solicitation charge) and was released Sunday, according to ABC News 4 and Live 5 News. WCBD, via Yahoo, reported the same bond figure.
Barry has built a substantial following as a content creator. His TikTok accounts, including @icarsonlocked, have more than 424,000 followers, and he maintains more than 148,000 followers on Instagram under @carson.barryyy. He has also promoted an OnlyFans account, per Live 5 News and Yahoo. The followings put the alleged conduct in a context local prosecutors have not previously had to address in a single case involving an influencer with this reach — though the same agencies have pursued parallel CSAM enforcement against platform-level exploitation, as in court documents showing TikTok profited from child-exploitation streams.
The Attorney General’s Office will prosecute the case. Wilson noted that all defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in a court of law. The Post and Courier is also covering the case.
Released Sunday. The investigation remains ongoing. The arrest comes against a broader backdrop of CSAM enforcement that has produced parallel cases across the country, including a St. Johns County man arrested on a child sex-abuse attempt and CSAM charges and Naomi Tekea Craig’s admission to child sexual abuse charges.
