Carole basking was a victim. The below is from someone who was actually involved in the documentary and court case:
The public vitriol I’ve seen toward Carole Baskin following the release of Tiger King is sexism at its most wicked. It’s hard to blame those who don’t have a history of this world for taking away the impressions they have. The filmmakers deliberately set out to show you a world in which everyone is just as guilty as the others, but that’s just not the reality.
Let’s review. Joe was cited for more than 200 violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act while he was exhibiting animals. He’s been fined and had his license suspended. He bred untold hundreds, probably thousands of baby big cats and sold them, illegally, to anyone who would pay for them with zero qualms about what would happen to them. He sold cubs to Doc Antle and others knowing that the cubs would be killed after they were too big to be used for public encounters. He sold cubs to Tim Stark knowing that they would suffer painful declawing surgeries that Joe admitted to me that he knew were horribly cruel. He took advantage of young, poor, drug addicted men. He fed them drugs and made them dependent on him. He admitted to shooting five tigers in the head to make room for tigers he was being paid to board. He warehoused hundreds of tigers in prison-like cell blocks at his roadside zoo. He kept two cats to a cage in which these animals who have home ranges of hundreds of miles in the wild could only take a few steps in any direction. The dirt under their paws was so permeated with years of built-up urine that the ammonia stench was overwhelming even in the parking lot. The stressful conditions often led to fights between the cats, and despite painful and gruesome injuries, he would deny them vet care, often trying to stitch up the wounds himself. This inevitably led to even more pain and suffering prior to death.
He terrorized Carole for years and encouraged his followers to do the same. He (or one of his followers) put snakes in her mailbox. He flew a helicopter over her property to frighten and intimidate her. He paid a man to hunt and kill her and took steps for another man to do the same. Sure, based on the evidence presented in the series, Jeff Lowe should probably be in prison right alongside Joe. But don’t think for one second that Joe isn’t guilty of the crimes for which he was convicted. The documentary doesn't tell you this, but other than himself, Joe's defense had only one witness at trial. It was me. That's how weak his case was.
On the other hand, there’s Carole. She realized decades ago that keeping wild and exotic cats as pets was wrong, and converted her facility to a sanctuary. That sanctuary is accredited by the Global Federation of Animal Sanctuaries, which has the strictest standards for captive wildlife care of any accrediting body in the world The series didn’t present accurate representations of the enclosures for cats at Big Cat Rescue. I’ve been there. Big Cat Rescue provides its residents with excellent facilities and impeccable care. Most of Big Cat Rescue’s staff are volunteers. This is not unusual for reputable sanctuaries. Their training program for volunteers is second-to-none. They allow the public to visit for limited guided tours. Again, this is typical of reputable sanctuaries, which use guided tours both to bring in desperately needed revenue to provide the best possible care to animals that are extremely expensive to care for, and to educate the public about the cruelty that wild and exotic cats face in the pet trade, in roadside zoos, and in circuses and the film and tv industries. After each guided tour, Big Cat Rescue offers participants the opportunity to call their federal representatives, right there on site, to ask them to support the Big Cat Public Safety Act, which would outlaw private ownership of big cats and restrict direct contact between big cats and the public. Carole and Big Cat Rescue are tireless advocates for wild and exotic cats and never turn down an opportunity to help. Carole has been the captive industry’s whipping boy for years, facing bullying and terror that none of us could imagine. But she is tough as nails and she takes it, because for Carole it’s about helping the cats, it’s not about her. She has persevered in this fight despite being terrorized, and stalked, and hunted. She doesn’t need me to come to her defense because she is strong as hell, but I’m incredibly dismayed by all of the hate I’ve seen online, and couldn’t stay silent for one more second.