Shiloh Hendrix has raised more than $750,000 through GiveSendGo after footage leaked of her calling a 5-year-old Black boy a racial slur.

Amid growing controversy around a fundraising campaign launched by a woman after she called a 5-year-old a racial slur that has raked in over $750,000, GiveSendGo’s CFO is doubling down on platforming people like Shiloh Hendrix.

While speaking to NewsNation last week, the platform’s CFO, Jacob Wells, offered up a defense of the fundraising site’s controversial practices and of some of its users—like Hendrix—a white woman caught on camera calling a young Black boy the N-word while at a playground in Rochester, Minnesota. 

In the weeks since she launched her campaign, which was increased to $1 million after it expeditiously met its original goal, GiveSendGo has been facing widespread backlash. Efforts have been launched to prevent her payout, along with local protests against her ability to fundraise and remain free of charges.   

“You have to take a step back from the emotion of these because they are very highly emotional issues and you land on a principle,” he said. “I believe in freedom of speech, freedom of association. These are foundational tenets to the society that we live in and when you start going down the road of cancellation and cancel culture, it actually breaks the very things that we see that we’re against.” 

After footage of the incident was leaked online on April 28, Hendrix launched a fundraiser on the platform to raise funds to protect her family and potentially relocate. In the campaign’s description, she said she called the boy “what he was.” The platform has become popular for those who are barred from other platforms like GoFundMe for various reasons—from criminal backgrounds to potential for harm.

Wells noted the public has developed a “mob mentality,” which has “ruined so many people’s lives.” He also said Hendrix wasn’t acting “unprovoked” that day on the playground.  

“The boy was rummaging through her belongings, so it’s not like she just stepped into the situation unprovoked and called a young boy a term,” Wells defended before adding that he doesn’t “condone calling people racial epithets [sic] and bad names at all.”

Since her campaign launched, the comments section was turned off after supporters began leaving both racist and sympathizing comments. 

He added that the video “bothered” him, but said that Hendrix “is going through a dark moment, just as much as this other family is, and we want to be a light in all of these moments.” 

Last week, the Rochester Police Department completed its investigation into the matter and turned the results over to the City Attorney’s Office for further review, KTTC reported. 

As a contrast, he also mentioned another campaign causing controversy on the platform, that of Karmelo Anthony, a 17-year-old who is accused of fatally stabbing another 17-year-old during a track meet in Texas. 

His campaign, which is raising funds to support legal and housing costs, has already raised more than $500,000. 

Wells said of Anthony, “He deserves the presumption of innocence until proven guilty in a court of law, just like everyone does.”