Parents of Sandy Hook win summary judgement against conspiracy theorist
The father of one of the children who died during the mass shooting at the Sandy Hook school has won a defamation lawsuit against the two authors of a conspiracy book that claimed the shooting never took place.
In a summary judgement, the judge ruled in favour of Lenny Pozner, whose son Noah died after a shooter entered the Sandy Hook school and opened fire, killing 20 children and 6 teachers in December 2012.
The book in question, Nobody Died at Sandy Hook was authored by James Fetzer and Mike Palacek and makes a number of bizarre claims frequently echoed on the Internet. Namely that the shooting was staged in an effort to enact strict gun control (despite little gun control ever being enacted since the shooting) and that the parents of children who were murdered that day are actually “crisis actors” – actors employed by the government or “deep state” to play a role in the cover-up.
While those claims are abhorrent enough, their growing popularity has meant that those who lose loved ones during mass shootings face a future of being continually harassed by conspiracy theorists who have been known to send threatening letters and social media posts, make threatening phone calls or even threaten them in person.
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A Florida resident has previously been sent to prison for 5 months for sending Pozner death threats.
This isn’t a phenomenon that is restricted to the shooting in Sandy Hook. Almost every mass shooting to have occurred in the United States over the last few decades has been targeted by such conspiracy theorists, and survivors of such shootings have reported the same type of harassment.
The continuing popularity of such theories that breed online has led to many survivors, including Pozner, to turn to the US Judicial System to fight back. In 2018, prolific conspiracy theorist Alex Jones was sued by parents of children who died at Sandy Hook for his role in proliferating such rumors.
The publishers of the conspiracy book – Moon Rock Books (who also face a separate settlement against Pozner) apologised to the parents and said that a meeting with Pozner led them to believe they are “telling the truth” about what happened to their children.
The book is being withdrawn from sale, though at the time of writing appears to still be available on the publisher’s website.
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A trial to decide the damages facing the book authors has been set for October 2019.
Pozner said “If Mr. Fetzer wants to believe that Sandy Hook never happened and that we are all crisis actors, even that my son never existed, he has the right to be wrong. But he doesn’t have the right to broadcast those beliefs if they defame me or harass me.”
A number of social media platforms have already cracked down on content that claims mass shootings never happened and that survivors are merely playing a part. Though the Internet is still a breeding ground for such content.
While people have the right to hold what beliefs they want to, broadcasting those beliefs if they risk causing harm or defamation to innocent parties is another matter altogether, and it is one that social media platforms and the Internet in general is struggling to tackle. But this summary judgement sends a strong message to conspiracy theorists everywhere. The survivors of mass shootings are fighting back, and if you’re willing to spread repugnant conspiracy theories across the Internet or even record them in a book, be prepared to face the legal consequences.
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