She Took to the Internet to Mourn Her Baby’s Death. People Blamed Her Instead
For the first three days after Veruca Salt brought her baby son Cash home from the hospital, she couldn’t sleep. She just couldn’t stop staring at him.
“[At first] I was so scared to just be alone with him. I have this baby, and I didn’t have to do a quiz or anything? They’ve just given me this baby?” Salt, an Australian OnlyFans model and influencer, tells Rolling Stone. “But after that first hour alone with him, all that fear that I was going to do something wrong or that he wouldn’t like me, all of that was just gone. I was just so obsessed with him.”
Before Cash, Salt (who asked to be referred to by her internet moniker) was known online for her comedic, blunt take on life and being a popular sex worker — which earned her a million followers on TikTok. Easily recognizable from her striking face tattoos, she developed an even more dedicated following when she announced her pregnancy in June 2023. Hundreds of thousands of people viewed the influencer’s daily videos, where she discussed her cravings, opened baby shower gifts, and had frank discussions about how her baby had changed her mood and attitude toward life and the future.
But when Cash was six weeks and six days old, Salt woke up to nurse him, only to find him dead. That moment catapulted the influencer into what she describes as “the biggest and worst thing I’ve ever been through.” Salt says an autopsy revealed Cash died from SIDS, the term for the sudden and unexpected death of an infant, for which medical experts currently have no explanation or cause. After days of seeing people comment about how happy a life the two of them would have together, or giving her advice about the toddler years, Salt updated her followers, letting them know that Cash had died. But to make the unfathomable tragedy worse, news of Cash’s death was immediately seized on by internet users and Australian tabloids, who speculated and blamed things like vaccines, unsafe sleep habits — and even Salt herself — on his death.
Veruca and Baby Cash
Willow and Finch Photography
“I think it’s very frustrating to watch people blame a vaccine or say I was negligent,” Salt says. “You don’t think I want a reason? I want a reason, but I’ll never have one. I don’t think it’s fair for people to act like I did anything wrong or to try and fill in the blanks when my baby is dead. They get to be hateful and then move on with their life after one scroll. And this is my life 24/7. This is how it will be for me forever.”
On its own, the death of any child is a painful and agonizing time for a parent. But Salt says it has been especially excruciating because the harassment and speculation she’s received have prevented her from using social media the way she wants to: as a place to grieve. Salt began her public social media accounts after being outed as a sex worker by the Daily Mail. Since then, her online presence hasn’t just been her job. It’s come to represent her taking her power back.
“The [tabloids] made me look like I was filthy, basically,” Salt says. “I felt like [with my accounts] people could actually see me as a person instead of a dirty fucking hooker. I am 100 percent myself. Who I am is who I am online. So people have watched me grow from being more explosive and angry and miserable to being pregnant and happy.”
Salt says she loved sharing her personal growth with her followers, which is why it feels so invasive that a once-safe space now feels hateful and antagonistic toward her grief. She and other friends have had to report dozens of comments accusing her of suffocating or harming her baby. Others have simply tagged her in videos, expressing relief that her baby has died instead of theirs. And the harassment isn’t just online. Less than 48 hours after Cash’s death, Salt says reporters from multiple outlets were swarming her house, even pretending to be relatives to gain access to her friends’ homes and neighbors’ properties.
“These people are like vultures. They want like some sort of inside scoop into my pain and suffering,” Salt says, emotional. “I don’t get the privilege of anonymity in my grief. They have been torturing me online for years before this. It’s just not fair. I should be able to just be sad about my baby dying. I shouldn’t have to feel other things because people need something to write about.”
There is no timeline for getting over the loss of a child. Salt still has pieces of her life with Cash she can’t bear to get rid of, like the dressing gown she was wearing when she said goodbye to him in the ambulance, or a dirty basket of clothes in his room soiled with spit-up and milk. Because Cash was young, many of the only clips and photos Salt has of him are posted on her TikTok, or sitting in her drafts, which can sometimes mean her having to choose between avoiding the harassment and getting to see her baby’s face and hear his laugh again. “Now that he’s not here, I don’t like that people who are hateful get to see him,” Salt says. But she won’t take those videos down, because for those followers who truly respect her, her page has become a small memorial to Cash — and a place for other moms to share their own memories of their late babies. “I deserve to post my baby like everyone else does. My son lived such a short life, he didn’t get the chance to change the world or do anything,” she says. “These short videos of him are the only impact he gets to make on the world. Even tho some people are sick and twisted, it’s worth it to me to have millions of people remember my son.”
Cash was six weeks and six days old when he died.
Willow and Finch Photography
And even with the pain, she doesn’t regret the time she spent with Cash or the small slice of the world she was able to show him. He loved listening to Taylor Swift and watching YouTube videos of bright dancing fruits. He started smiling two weeks before he died. And the sound of a thunderstorm could lull him to sleep better than anything else. It’s memories like these that Salt says she’s holding tight. And when online noise gets loud, she reminds herself that even though people felt like they experienced Cash with her, no angry comments or accusations can drown out their connection.
“When they were loading him into the hearse after the funeral, it was such a hot day,” she says. “The sun was out all day. But immediately, it started thundering and storming. It was crazy. It’s stuff like that where it makes me feel like he’s still watching. My baby saved my life. His life was so short, but I knew him for nine months before everyone else did. He is part of me and always will be.”
