The Criminal Charge Against AnimO's Founder: The Truth

This is a hard post to write, but it’s something I need to share so I can stop reliving it every time someone asks. I’ve carried the weight of this quietly for too long. It’s time I put it out there.

My name is Mina and I'm the founder and operator of AnimO Sanctuary.

In the summer of 2023, I underwent a medical procedure that left me physically weak and recovering for some time. As I was regaining strength, life began to fall apart around me.

My best friend Ashley—the one I named our beloved crow after—was in a devastating accident. She collided with a bus, slipped into a coma, and never woke up. She passed away in August.

Not long after, another of my closest friends—someone I grew up with and who was like a sister to me—had stage 4 cancer and was given a few months to live. Our families were deeply connected; we were inseparable as kids. When she passed away later that year, she left behind her two-year-old son. (That's when I shaved my head for cancer in her honor). The grief was overwhelming. Losing them both in such a short span broke something in me.

During this time, I was also enrolled in a course run by Best Friends Animal Society at Southern Utah University in the U.S. and had studied so hard that year, I graduated top of my class with a 99.4 gpa. I traveled to the U.S. for 10 days as part of the program—something I’d worked so hard and got a full scholarship to. While I was gone, I arranged for help back home. It was one more reason I needed support.

But what I got was not support.

The woman who came to “help” me ended up doing unthinkable things. While I was out buying cleaning supplies, she went through my personal belongings—including my prescription medications—without permission. She took photos of every bit of mess in the house, shared my private medical information (a massive violation), created public Google Drive folders, and began mass-messaging thousands of my followers.

She told people I was neglecting and killing animals, and I was misusing donations and taking drugs. So here’s a bit of truth: I WAS an addict in my late teens and early 20s. I quit drugs but still drank heavily for a while in my early 30's. I'm 43 now and I’ve now been sober for 7 years—well before I ever started AnimO. I’ve worked incredibly hard to build a life rooted in integrity, purpose, and care—for animals and people alike.

Even when the house fell into disarray due to everything happening at once, the animals were never neglected. They were always fed, loved, and given fresh water. Always.

Her smear campaign slowly gained traction. Other organizations joined in. ARK took it to the courts based on the photos this woman took when I was struggling the most. All charges from 2023 when the photos were taken were dropped. But on August 20th, 2024, police arrived with a search and seizure warrant. At that time we were in the middle of moving to the farm so most of the animals had already relocated.

Twelve authority figures showed up at my door. It was terrifying for the animals that hadn’t yet moved to the farm. The visit caused a lot of distress, but thankfully, the animals were seen to be in good health and none weren’t taken away.

The farm was amazing for the animals—so much space, fields, fresh air—but I had no proper place to live myself. I stayed in a one-room hut that was falling apart. There was no storage, no space for personal belongings. I had to leave a lot behind.

I emptied shelves and cupboards onto the floors and left anything I didn’t immediately need in rooms that were no longer in use. No animals were in those rooms. But because police couldn’t verify that, I was charged and fined ¥100,000.

I had only one staff member then. Her job was to clean the house while I worked full-time at the farm building enclosures and settling animals in. She has a mental disability, but I truly believed she could manage the responsibility. But after the police visit, I installed a nanny cam and saw that she spent her entire six-hour shift on her phone, not cleaning. It turns out she had an addiction to social media. I fired her immediately and informed her mother, who as punishment, took her phone away. To this day, she's only allowed a flip phone with no access to the internet. She was also taken in for questioning but I took full responsibility. I told the police that I should have managed her better. I took the fall—I had to protect her.

Now, that same woman who started the smear campaign has found out about the fine and is once again flooding the internet with lies: that I torture, neglect, or kill animals. I don’t. And if you visit AnimO, you’ll see for yourself how loved, happy, and balanced our animals are.

Unlike many rescues, I don’t hide. My name, my face, my location—they’re all public. I’m on Google Maps. Anyone can email, call, or visit. Yet the people spreading these lies including so-called reputable organizations like ARK and JCN—they’ve never even set foot here or any of the last locations. They’ve never visited. When people try to defend AnimO in their comments, they’re blocked immediately. Our voice is being silenced while misinformation is being shouted.

I’ve had friends, volunteers, and supporters tell me again and again: take legal action. Sue, send cease and desist letters. Slander, defamation, and harassment are criminal offenses in Japan. And they’re right—but I don’t have the money, time or energy to go down that road. My efforts are better spent on caring for our beloved animals.

This chapter of my life has been painful beyond words. But even in the midst of it all, AnimO has kept growing. We've continued rescuing, healing, and giving animals a second chance.

And now, we’ve taken another big step forward. We’ve moved again—this time to a new place with even more land and my own home. This is the last relocation because we bought the land! But that’s a story for another blog.

Doing extraordinary things is never easy. There’s no instruction manual, you just have to do it through trial and error. Every rescue, every shelter, makes mistakes—we’re all human, doing our best with limited time, energy, and resources. But AnimO has learned from every struggle. We've faced hardship, we’ve taken the lessons to heart, and we’ve grown stronger because of it. We continue to grow. But to drag a rescue through the mud for mistakes long since corrected—mistakes that don’t reflect the thriving, beautiful environment we’ve created today—only hurts the animals who rely on us. The focus should always be on their well-being, not on personal vendettas.

To our unwavering supporters—thank you. To those who tried to speak up but were silenced, to those who quietly ignored the noise and stood by us anyway, and to every follower who continues to believe in our mission: you are the reason AnimO keeps going. Your love and strength carry us through the hardest days. And I promise you this—until my dying breath, AnimO will continue to grow, to heal, to rescue, and to inspire. One day, I’ll pass the torch to someone who shares that same fire, and AnimO will live on as the incredible sanctuary it was always meant to be.