About to be evicted from her north Las Vegas home, Dasha Kelly asked for help online to find money to pay the $ 2,000 rent she owed and to stay with her three daughters in their home.
"We were doing well before this pandemic hit. Now we are suffering," explained the 32-year-old woman on the GoFundMe donations page that she titled
Help my daughters and me not to be evicted
.
For weeks, no one contributed.
But on August 2, the CNN television network published an article about this family's struggle and the next day it aired an interview with Kelly, who appeared sitting on her sofa with three girls that she identified as her own.
Part of the camp set up in front of the Capitol, in Washington DC, the Democratic representative Cori Bush, who spent the night of Friday, July 30, outside to ask congressmen to extend the moratorium on evictions that ends on Saturday, July 31. Joshua Roberts / Getty Images
His testimony caused an avalanche of solidarity that this Monday, with about 3,700 donors, had already exceeded $ 234,000.
However, days after the broadcast of the program, another woman claimed to be the girls' real mother.
Kelly then confessed that she was not the biological mother of the minors who had appeared on television with her.
[The CDC extends until October 3 the moratorium on evictions in the areas most affected by the coronavirus]
On her fundraising page, she explained Monday that the girls, ages 8, 6 and 5, are actually her partner's daughters.
Although she does not live with him, she affirms that all three recognize her as "a mother figure."
"I have loved these girls unconditionally. I treat them like my daughters and take care of them in this way," Kelly wrote.
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GoFundMe has since frozen the money in the account.
Kelly had not responded Tuesday night to inquiries from The Washington Post, which reported what had happened;
A spokesperson for the fundraising website did explain that the company will give people two weeks to claim and recover their donations before transferring what is left to Kelly.
The amount of donations had dropped to less than $ 200,000 on Wednesday.
CNN also did not respond to The Washington Post's questions but updated its story on Monday, explaining Kelly's true relationship with the three girls.
Reporter Nick Watt said that when he interviewed Kelly at her apartment for the story, everything he saw confirmed that Kelly was his mother.
[I have not been able to pay the rent, what can I do now? We answer questions about the end of the moratorium on evictions]
"All the girls called their mother, they seemed to be at home and there was nothing we could see that raised any suspicions," he said.
Watt said she learned that Kelly was not the girls' mother when a woman named Shadia Hilo contacted the news network and, with birth certificates, proved she was the biological mother.
"Shadia Hilo is upset, understandably, because another person has posed as the mother of three of her daughters, girls she also cares for," the reporter said.
When contacted by CNN, Kelly justified describing the girls as her daughters because she "sees herself as a mother to those girls."
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Watt admitted that Kelly spends a lot of time babysitting the girls in her apartment.
Hilo corroborated this information to CNN by revealing that he had recently left them with Kelly for a week, at which point the interview was recorded and they appeared on television.
"It's clear that she takes care of those girls part of the time," Watt said.
"But in that GoFundMe petition she described the girls as her daughters and that is simply not true," he stressed.
Kelly told GoFundMe that she still needs donations to avoid being evicted and that she would use them "to get back on her feet" and support her family. She also promised to put some of the money in a savings account for the girls.
Protesters outside the Capitol in Sacramento, California, demand rent forgiveness and stricter eviction protection legislation on January 25, 2021.AP Photo / Rich Pedroncelli
The Aug. 3 interview with Kelly was part of CNN's coverage of the federal moratorium on evictions that had expired days earlier, on July 31.
Missouri Democratic Rep. Cori Bush, who was also featured in the segment, repeatedly told Kelly that she was worthy of financial support.
Kelly cried and seemed overwhelmed as a presenter informed her in real time of the amount of money people were donating.
With information from The Washington Post and CNN.