Sorry you're going through this.

I was on a popular forum back in the day where there were 200 people online at any time. Then one of the administrators got frustrated and let someone use his account, and that person permanently deleted most everything on the forum.

The forum recovered (somewhat) at first, but many people were discouraged and just left. They were upset that their posts and threads were permanently deleted, and that there was nothing that could be done about it, as the administrator's friend deleted the forum backups as well.

The only real people who stayed were a bunch of trolls, and the trolls were allowed to roam free because they are what kept the forum active... but they were trolls and that discouraged other people from joining. But the administrators let the trolls do what they wanted because they were afraid of the site dying... and well, as the trolls quit, no one new joined.