YouTuber Mikayla Raines, whose SaveAFox channel and organization focused on animal rescue, has died by suicide after years of online bullying reached a boiling point. She was 29.
The activist’s husband, Ethan, announced her death Monday in an emotional video, just two days after Raines’ last post.
“A couple days ago, Mikayla Raines passed away,” Ethan said. “She felt as if the entire world had turned against her. She had always battled with borderline personality disorder, causing emotional instability as well as impulsive behaviors. But this time it went too far. She couldn’t bear what she was feeling any longer. And she ended her life.”
In addition to BPD, Ethan said his wife also struggled with autism and depression, which led to her being “so sensitive to everything.”
This “double-edged sword … allowed her endless empathy for those in her care. But it also means that she took everything negative to heart,” he said.
“For a few years, a group of people had been throwing dirt on Mikayla’s name and the rescue. Most of these are people she knew and some of them are other animal sanctuaries. They consistently spread ridiculous claims and rumors and being the sensitive human that she was, Mikayla took it all to heart,” Ethan added.
He said that while she “pushed through the pain” for years — “rescu[ing] hundreds of animals and chang[ing] the lives of so many” in the process” — the hurtful words and accusations, some from people she “considered close friends,” got to be too much for her to handle.
Ethan then directed his statement to “every one of you that had been responsible for making her feel this way.”
“I wish you had to see me find her,” he said through tears. “I wish you had to hear the screams and the cries of her family. … I wish you understood what you were doing before you did it. Before it had to go this far.”
Ethan — who remembered Raines as not only an “amazing superhero of animals,” but as a “wonderful wife, and a caring mother” — said he intends to continue her mission of saving “as many animals as possible,” with the help of SaveAFox’s supporters, “and we’ll be doing it for Mikayla.”
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