Former Miss Teen USA Speaks Out After J.D. Vance Resurfaced Viral Pageant Video of Her for Which She Was Mocked

Former Miss South Carolina Teen USA Caite Upton has said she contemplated suicide as a result of the mockery she received after going viral

The woman who was mocked and cyber-bullied after her viral 2007 appearance as a pageant contestant is pushing back against vice presidential J.D. Vance after he used a clip of her to smear Kamala Harris.

Former Miss South Carolina Teen USA Caite Upton was widely mocked when, during the 2007 Miss Teen USA pageant, she nervously answered a question about geography and education.

The footage of her answer went viral, with Upton later saying she contemplated suicide as a result of her near-overnight notoriety and mockery that ensued for some two years.

But the footage resurfaced last week, when Vance — who is running on the Republican ticket alongside Donald Trump — used it to mock current vice president Harris.

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“BREAKING: I have gotten ahold of the full Kamala Harris CNN interview," Vance wrote in a post on X, alongside the viral 2007 footage of Upton. The post was meant to belittle Harris and, in the process, belittle Upton more than a decade years after she first went unintentionally viral.

"It’s a shame that 17 years later this is still being brought up," Upton said in a statement given to PEOPLE. "There’s not too much else to say about it at this point."

She continued: "Regardless of political beliefs, one thing I do know is that social media and online bullying needs to stop.For anyone else going through something similar, please visithttps://endcyberbullying.org/and WhiteFlag (https://www.whiteflagapp.com/)as resources."

Upton has publicly opened up about how her brush with viral fame hurt her mental health, tellingNew Yorkmagazine in a 2015 interview, “I definitely went through a period where I was very, very depressed. But I never let anybody see that stuff, except for people I could trust."

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She continued: “I had some very dark moments where I thought about committing suicide. The fact that I have such an amazing family and friends, it really, really helped.”

Upton added that the online chatter leaked into her real life, recounting how, at a college party, the "the entire USC baseball team surrounded me and bashed me with the harshest, meanest comments I had ever heard."

"And somebody once put a letter in my parents’ mailbox about how my body was going to be eaten alive by ants and burned in a freak fire. And then it said, in all caps, GO DIE CAITE UPTON, GO DIE FOR YOUR STUPIDITY," she said, adding that the harsh comments lasted "every single day for a good two years."

Despite the outcry over the post, Vance has been unapologetic, telling CNN, "I'm not going to apologize for a joke."

As critics have noted, many of Vance's public remarks target women — with the Republican himself going viral for past interviews in which he has said that women without children are “childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives.”

Vance has also come under fire for a 2020 podcast interview in which he and the host discussed "the postmenopausal female," with the now-senator agreeing that the "whole purpose" of a woman past child-bearing age is to help raise grandkids.

And in resurfaced audio from 2021 obtained byTMZ, Vance said that teachers without children “really disturb” him while taking a shot at the president of the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten.

“You know, so many of the leaders of the left, and I hate to be so personal about this, but they’re people without kids trying to brainwash the minds of our children. And that really disorients me and it really disturbs me," Vance, now 40, said in the clip.

If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please contact the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by dialing 988, text "STRENGTH" to the Crisis Text Line at 741741 or go to 988lifeline.org.

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