A father's fight to reclaim the truth about Sandy Hook
47:04 Share

Hey, aren't you that PBM? Middleman. At your service, doctor. Don't you get rebates that save money on medicines? Oh, PBMs like me get big rebates. So why do patients tell me they're worried about their costs? No one says we have to share the savings with patients. Congress should make sure medicine savings go directly to patients, not middlemen. Visit prma.org slash middlemen to learn more. Paid for by Pharma.

This month marks 12 years since the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting that killed six adults and 20 children. Among them was six-year-old Emily Parker. Her father, Robbie Parker, was the first parent to publicly speak about the tragedy, a decision that has haunted him ever since.

His public appearance attracted conspiracy theorist broadcaster Alex Jones, who questioned Parker's grief and claimed the shooting was staged in an effort to promote gun control.

Robbie Parker is among the Sandy Hook parents who won a defamation suit against Jones. Now, Parker has written a book that tells the story of his devastating loss and how it was compounded by threats and harassment based on lies that Jones widely broadcast to millions of people. I'm Deborah Becker. This is On Point. Robbie Parker is with us now. Robbie, thanks for being with us. Hi, Deborah. Thanks for the invite. I appreciate being here.

Tell us about your daughter, Emily. Oh, I'd love to. We could talk for a long time about Emily. No, she was the most gregarious child. She had a way of knowing how she felt inside and sharing that with the world and sharing it with me as her father. And the love that she had and the way that she expressed it and communicated it with you was just the most beautiful thing to be a part of. And she's the oldest of your three daughters. Yes.

Correct, yeah, three girls. At the time of the shooting, she was six and your other daughters were four and three, is that right? Yeah, four, almost five and three and a half, yeah. We had them all really close. As we said, Emily was among the children killed in the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December of 2012. And I'm so sorry that you...

that you have to live through this and tell this story, but it's an important one to tell. And I'm sure you've replayed that day, December 14th, 2012 day, in your mind over the years, probably many, many times. But what do you think people should know about you and what your family experienced that day?

No, that's a great question. I mean, yeah, I've replayed that day thousands of times in my head, and I have to repeat it when I hear about other school shootings. And I repeat my day in my head, and then I try and remember the parents that are going through that same day themselves. And so for me, the lack of information that was available to us for hours and hours is one thing that still sticks with me. You know, it took a long time for authorities to be able to

figure out what happened and to get information that they could reliably share with us. And just that waiting and waiting for a long time and you're holding on to hope and you know that things are bad and getting worse and feeling that hope kind of slip through your fingers is this sensation that I can't seem to totally grasp still. When did you know that you had to let go of hope? Can you explain what happened?

Yeah, I mean, I can remember the moment that that happened. We were in this conference room where they had put a lot of parents that hadn't been reunited with children and we were waiting for updates. And every hour they would just tell us the only information we knew was that 20 children had died, but we weren't sure if our kids were dead or if they just hadn't been found yet. The governor ended up coming in and started speaking and he was talking in a way as if

We should have known that our children had died. It was like he wasn't briefed that we hadn't been briefed. A parent asked, like, are you telling us that our children are dead? And he said, yes. My wife, Alyssa, raised her hand and asked, well, what about the children that went to the hospital? What's their status? And he said that those children had expired. And with those words, that was when any flicker of hope that any of us were holding was snuffed out and just evaporated. Hmm.

It's just amazing to me that there was no sensitivity in that moment. I mean, what do you make of that? I mean, what do you attribute that to? I mean, I'm in a unique position. I work in the newborn intensive care unit. So I've been in a position where I've had to break news of a death of a child to somebody. And I've also now been on the receiving end of that. And so I have actually a lot of compassion for Governor Malloy. He was

really in an impossible situation. I don't know if anybody could have done that in a way that would have been right. Um, so, but that was definitely wrong. It did not feel good, but, um, I, I recognize the situation that he was in. I don't feel like he had been prepped well for it. And, um,

Yeah, it's an impossible message to deliver. I've done it, like I've said, a number of times, and I never feel like I've done it right. And I don't feel like I've been as thoughtful or as caring or as understanding as I should have been, especially now that I'm on the other side of it. Almost immediately, you were inundated. You and the other families were inundated with media requests. And you decided to speak publicly. Why?

A number of reasons. The most, the easiest reason is we, I was just trying to focus on my family and what it was that we needed, right? I mean, young girls, a mom that had lost her precious daughter, family that was coming in to support us. And so the media was a big distraction and we weren't saying anything, but they kept going. They kept going to friends. They kept going to acquaintances, anybody that posted about us or knowing us on Facebook, the media was a

calling them all across the country at all these places that we had lived. And I didn't want anybody saying something about Emily or about our family that wasn't accurate, that couldn't be taken back. I felt like if anybody was going to say anything about Emily, it needed to come from her parents, the people who knew her best.

And I thought that if I provided a statement, I could give the media a bone to chew on so that they would leave us alone. That was my intention and also shows how naive I was about my understanding about how media works. Right. And so what did you say? What did you think was the main point? Remind us because it has been almost 12 years. What did you tell folks then?

Yeah, I mean, my intention was really... The idea I had was I wanted just to record a statement to a reporter that they would send back to Utah. That's where my family and most of our friends are from. And I wanted to just...

just explain who Emily was, how we were feeling, and what I felt like this loss meant. And I just wanted it to be sent to people that I felt like knew us and cared about us. It was not intended to be what it was, to be this live broadcast and broadcasted across the country. So that was the intention. And just giving people an idea of how precious Emily's life was and what she meant to us and what it felt like in that moment that she was gone. Yeah.

And it was very soon after that that conspiracy theorist broadcaster Alex Jones used your statements at that public event and started saying that

The Sandy Hook shooting was staged. He was also attacking you personally for smiling during that event and saying that the shooting never happened. It was just an attempt at gun control. I mean, explain how all of that came about. I mean, Alex Jones got involved almost immediately after news of the shooting broke. So I explained that the parents, we were waiting in this car.

conference room at this firehouse for hours to find out if our children were alive or dead. While we were waiting, and I wasn't sure the status on Emily, he was already on his show broadcasting to millions of people to watch out that this was fake, that we need to question this event, that the government uses things like these to come after your guns. And so he had already started stoking that flame before I was still holding on to hope at that moment. And he was already stoking that flame to millions of people.

So when I gave my press conference, I unknowingly stepped into the crosshairs of becoming a target for them. Now there was a face. Now there was a person. Now there was a name to who it was that was threatening your rights, who it was that you needed to watch out for and who you needed to attack. And I unwittingly became that target. Had you ever heard of Alex Jones before?

No, never. I mean, I had heard of, you know, 9/11 was an inside job or moon landing conspiracies, those kinds of things. And I knew there were people out there that, you know, subscribe to that kind of thought. But no, I'd never known who Alex Jones was. I didn't know the reach he had or how dangerous he was. You were actually approached by one of his followers in a threatening way and also received various threatening messages.

How would you describe to folks the fallout from Alex Jones's statements about Sandy Hook to you personally and your family? Yeah, so on a personal level, we had just experienced what we now understood one person was capable of doing to another. Somebody that we didn't know that lived in our community went into that school and murdered innocent, innocent children. And they're the teachers that cared for them and loved them.

So just having experienced that and then overnight from me giving that statement within less than 48 hours of Sandy Hook happening to have people coming online and on social media and threatening me and threatening my family, that felt very, very real. This wasn't something that I could ignore. So what I describe as what Alex Jones and his followers did in that moment, that's evil. It's not that they were just attacking me or defiling Emily's name. That's horrible.

But they started to rob me and my family from our ability to grieve. Our grief was really raw at that moment. And in my opinion, it's a very sacred time. That's the closest we are ever going to be to Emily again in this life. And to have somebody come in and insert themselves into that and rob me and my family of our ability to work on that together, that is a very evil thing. Were you often fearful?

All the time. These are people who you don't know who subscribes to these things. You know that they're around. You see evidence of them being around. I would go out in public and come home and I'd have an email about somebody seeing me at the post office with my daughter that day. So yeah, that's a very scary thought. And again, that shooter, he didn't know who Emily was. He didn't know who I was. He didn't hate me. He had his own issues that we'll never understand anymore.

But these people, they did know who I was. They proved that they knew where I lived and they hated me and they were given a reason to hate me. And that's a different level of scary. How did you learn? What was the most helpful thing in learning to cope with all of those complicated emotions simultaneously? Oh, man. Was it therapy? Was it support? What was it?

Yeah, I mean, it's an ongoing process. I mean, my story is still being lived out and told from all of this. In the beginning, yeah, we did get some good therapists that were very helpful. But I really just wanted to focus on grief. And so my time spent in therapy was trying to focus on grief. I was holding all the conspiracy stuff in so much that I didn't even talk to my therapist about it.

I felt like that was a burden I bore because I'm the one that gave the statement. I'm the one that made the mistake of remembering my daughter and smiling while he did it and felt like I gave them the fodder to come after me. So I felt like that was my burden to bear and I held it really, really tight. It took a lot of experiences over many years to get me to the point where I felt like I needed to address it.

Obviously, these are things that I talk about in the book. Okay, Robbie, we'll talk about more after a break. We're talking with Robbie Parker. I'm Deborah Becker. This is On Point. Support for the On Point podcast comes from Indeed.

Are you hiring? With Indeed, your search is over. Indeed doesn't just help you hire faster. 93% of employers agree that Indeed delivers the highest quality matches compared to other job sites. And listeners get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com slash on point. That's Indeed.com slash on point. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? You need Indeed.

This is On Point. I'm Deborah Becker. We're speaking with Robbie Parker about his book titled A Father's Fight, taking on Alex Jones and reclaiming the truth about Sandy Hook. Robbie's six-year-old daughter, Emily, was killed in the mass shooting that took place at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut in 2012. And Robbie, before the break, we were talking about coping with a lot of complicated emotions at once, grief for the loss of your daughter, and then fear of

because you were being threatened by followers of Alex Jones who believed his claims that the Sandy Hook shooting wasn't real. And I asked you what helped you deal with those complicated emotions. Can you get back to that and explain a little bit more?

Yeah, sure. And I can be more succinct too. It's been a long process, right? So yeah, I mean, in the beginning, I was talking about how helpful therapy was. And therapy was used for me as a way to process grief. Alyssa and I knew...

that our children were going to emulate how we were grieving. And so we were really focused on trying to learn how to do that, you know, in air quotes, right, like the right way. And so healthy grief was a big priority. When it comes to conspiracy people, what was hard was I couldn't hold both of those things at the same time. I couldn't focus on grief and try and protect my family. So I always was every day, every hour, I was having to make this choice. Do I want to protect my family?

family? Or do I want to grieve in a healthy way and be there for my family? And that took a toll over many years. When it comes to conspiracy people, there was a number of events that I had to go through and to learn a lesson that me holding these things in and not sharing them and not being honest with myself or with people about what was happening to me

finally broke loose. And I was able to realize what I had been giving up, the power that I gave up, that what I was trying to do wasn't working. And my family was actually suffering from my inability to face these things, and eventually got the courage to face it by means of

joining a lawsuit and all those kinds of things. But that's what my life was like for a long time. I had to choose between grieving and protecting my family, and it paid a heavy toll on me and us. You decided to move from Connecticut to the West Coast. Was that because you were concerned about your family's safety?

Yeah, that was a major, major concern. That's where we're from. I'd gone to school out on the West Coast. We had roots and people there. In Connecticut, there was a great job opportunity, but we didn't really know very many people. We didn't have very much family there. We hadn't lived there very long before the shooting. And so I realized that my children needed some autonomy as well. And so going to a place that was familiar to us and gave them an opportunity to live out their lives as adults

you know, who they are and not as the sister of a victim was really important to us as well. And your job, you're a physician's assistant in the neonatal intensive care unit for Oregon Health Science University. And you were a physician assistant in the NICU unit in Connecticut as well. What was it like to go back to work after the shooting? Yeah, no, that's a beautiful question.

you know, the right adjectives like escapes me right now. Like it was hard, right? Yeah. But I mean, it was harder in the way that

I was so nervous that I need to be in my job. I'm involved in when a baby's born and if there's complications, then I need to be present. I need to be there and I need to help. Right. I also go to a lot of deliveries where everything's fine and there's a lot of joy. And those are really special moments. And I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to show up for my patients and their families anymore. I worried that I would have a hard time seeing a family that

feel complete and feel happy and looking at their daughter and holding their daughter. I didn't know what that was going to do to me. And so that I look back at that now and realize going back to work and facing that actually

It took a lot of courage for me to step into that because of how scared I was. And it also allowed me a way to be there for my families in a way that I wouldn't have been able to otherwise. When they're going through hard things and when they're struggling with things that are out of their control, that I could show up for them in a way that would have been impossible for me to do that before. Yeah.

A few years after the shooting, you did decide to join other Sandy Hook families in the lawsuit against Alex Jones. And why did you decide to join families in that suit? Because there had been other litigation that you decided not to partake in. So what was it about this lawsuit that made you say, I'm going to be involved here?

Yeah, I mean, for years I had taken on this mentality of I need to protect my family, so I'm going to make it hard for conspiracy people to find us, right? I didn't want to give them any more opportunity to come after us or ammunition for them to use. And like I said, that took a toll on me. It disconnected me from who I was as a person. It affected my relationships with my family in a negative way. Yeah.

And so there was a lot of things building up. I decided not to join the first lawsuit that was filed because of those reasons. I didn't want to be looked at as being sue happy or that I'm somehow trying to get money off the death of my daughter, all those kinds of things. The Connecticut suit touched me differently. I had an experience with another family that had lost a daughter in a school shooting in Florida.

And seeing Parkland, the Parkland shooting. Exactly. Yeah. And in talking with them, we wanted to show up and be there for them and their grief as they were starting that journey. We were six years down the road. And they also started talking about them being attacked by conspiracy theorists and things that I knew that Alex Jones had been saying about that. And I realized their grief was being impacted. And I knew what that felt like. And I felt like this was an opportunity. I'm six years down the road. I have some perspective. I can do something about this.

There was a moment with my daughter, Madeline. We pulled into a parking lot. We were going to go into this store to get a treat. She had been a really, her and Samantha had been really great on this long day of running errands. And she was frozen in her chair. She wouldn't get out of the car because the car next to us had an InfoWars bumper sticker. And she asked me, she goes, isn't that the guy that bullies you?

And I said, yeah, that's the guy that he says a lot of mean stuff about me and about Emily. And she goes, well, I don't want to go inside. And in case somebody knows and recognizes you, and I don't want to see you get bullied. And she was really, really scared. And I realized in that moment that my approach of hiding wasn't protecting her.

and that the fear I was trying to not introduce into her life was already there. And so at that moment, I wanted her to know that I was willing to fight for her just as much as I was for Emily. And there was something inside of me that knew I was losing a lot of myself and I needed to gain it back and I needed to reclaim a lot of things. You know, it was August of 2022, not that long ago, when Alex Jones took the stand in a Texas courtroom.

And the Sandy Hook's parents' lawyers asked him to acknowledge the role he played in spreading false information about Sandy Hook. We have a short clip of Alex Jones here being questioned by the lawyer. Let's listen.

Do you understand now that it was absolutely irresponsible of you to do that? It was, especially since I met the parents. And it's 100% real, as I said on the radio yesterday, and as I said here yesterday. It's 100% real. It's 100% real after many, many years of saying that the shooting was not real. Was that a victory, Robbie Parker, to hear Alex Jones say something like that?

Yeah. Yes and no. I think it's veiled. I feel like in the Texas case, and when he took the stand there, he was in a much different character than he was when he showed up in Connecticut. He knew the whole time, the whole time that it was 100% real. He chose to spread his lies and do what he did because he knew what it gave him. And he uses his listeners to

bilk them for their money and for their trust and for everything else that they've got to prop himself up. So in that moment, I feel like he was trying to save his brand. I think he was trying to save face. I think he was trying to

avoid the accountability we were all holding him to. And so that moment for me wasn't necessarily a victory. A victory for me was a moment in the Connecticut case when he was in the courtroom and I was able to take the power away from him and give it back to myself. How did you do that?

there was two moments um in the connecticut case he came out very bombastic on the stand he was very threatening and accusatory and mean and so he was lashing out at our lawyers and um he said he was done apologizing and he doesn't uh you know he doesn't owe us anything and all that kind of stuff um

There was a moment where my lawyer was questioning Jones about the press conference I gave and how he only showed ever the four second clip of me laughing or smiling. And he asked him, he's like, have you ever watched Robbie's whole statement? And I was sitting in the courtroom just going like, no, Chris, don't do this. Don't do this. I don't want to talk about this. I don't want to see it again. I'm so sick of how he used that statement against me and what he did to Emily with it.

And, but Chris, my lawyer just said, we're going to watch it. And Alex Jones was forced to sit there in a courtroom with TV screens everywhere where he couldn't avoid it. And he got to see the love that I had for Emily. He got to see what it was that I really did. And he couldn't face it. He couldn't watch it.

He kept his eyes down. He couldn't face the truth. And in that moment, I realized he never had any power over me. And I was right there to claim that back. And that means the world to me. The second time that I got what I needed and I could claim victory for myself was after testifying and speaking the truth about what we had been through.

And knew that after that moment that I'd accomplished everything that I set out to do as far as the lawsuit was concerned. We actually have a clip of Jones from the 2022 trial in Connecticut.

And he said at the time of the shooting, he believed that it was staged. And so because that was his belief at the time, he wasn't really liable for defamation. He did apologize. But he was, as you said, bombastic and defiant about his effect.

in all of this and what role he had in potentially sparking harassment against you and other Sandy Hook parents. Let's listen to a bit of that. I've already said I'm sorry hundreds of times, and I'm done saying I'm sorry. I didn't pro-generate this. I wasn't the first person to say it. American governors are being blamed for this, as the left did. So we rejected it mentally and said it must not be true. But I legitimately thought it might have been staged, and I stand by that and I don't apologize for it.

So he says he, at the time, thought it was legitimately a staged event and he's not going to apologize further. Is that what you meant by Alex Jones' bombastic demeanor in the Connecticut trial, Robbie? Yeah, absolutely. This was all about holding him to be accountable for what it was that he did, right? And so him saying those kinds of things are his way of avoiding the accountability. And so we were able to, in the...

Little information we were able to glean from InfoWars before the trial through the discovery process. We were able to find out that they planned these things. They watched my press conference that night and afterwards had a meeting to talk about how can we use this to our advantage. So the trial really showed me something that I wasn't expecting was how precise and how calculated this was. I thought that, like many others, that Alex Jones is this crazy guy that just flies by the seat of his pants and he just says these things.

And that's all true, but it's also very sinister and it's very calculated and it's very precise. So he says that, but he knew better. Yes, exactly. Very strategic. And that made it more scary for me. I thought I was just dealing with this crazy person that you just don't know how to control. But to realize that it was strategic and precise and that I became a target, that made...

that up to the level of what it was I had actually been facing for so many years. Another argument from Alex Jones and his lawyers was that his free speech rights are protected. What do you think can be learned from this as cases against Jones and other similar cases go forward involving free speech rights and how to define when the line is crossed? What would you say?

Right. Yeah. And I'm as much of a fan of free speech as anybody else is, even as Alex Jones is. But there are limitations to it. And those have historically been known. You can't defame people. You can't say things that you know are false that can put people in harm's way. You can't run into a theater and yell fire. So there are limitations to it. And I don't think the point of...

Testing the boundaries of free speech or to test the limitations, but it's to test where it is that it needs to be applied. Social media companies were complicit in spreading Alex Jones's hate and rhetoric and allowing his power to grow and grow and grow for years. They never listened to my concerns. They are responsible for...

a lot of the attack and a lot of the fear that was instilled on me and my family. So holding social media companies accountable for their algorithms and the things that they write and produce that spread these things. So there's a

And you testified before Congress about social media companies. Is that right?

Exactly. Yeah, I was invited to testify at a Senate hearing about, you know, social media. People on one side of the aisle feel like social media unfairly limits them. And people on the other side of the aisle feel like social media companies aren't doing enough to be accountable to their product. And you won the lawsuit in Connecticut. The family's right. Largest such verdict in U.S. history, one and a half billion dollars. Yes.

Yeah, that felt very validating when the jury came back with that verdict. Their job was to show the harm that he did, and that was their way of being able to communicate that. What will happen with that money? What's the status of it now?

Jones has been hiding in bankruptcy courts. The government that he rails against and doesn't trust, he ran to to try and protect him from accountability. So right now,

I mean, he doesn't have that money. I haven't seen any of it. The only people that have seen any of his money are his lawyers. And so we're fighting that in bankruptcy. He's having to liquidate his assets. It was reported recently that his business InfraWars was won out in an auction and bought out by The Onion, which is poetically great.

The satirical media outlet, The Onion, right? The other end of the spectrum of truth. But yeah. But The Onion's bid, I'm told, was bolstered by the Sandy Hook family's expected settlement. Exactly. The Connecticut families in particular, we had to be willing to sacrifice a lot of things. We didn't want allies of Jones to be able to

buy his company and give it back to him. We're trying to make this, it's all about accountability. It's not about money. And we were trying to make it hard for him to spread his hate. And so we were willing to support a lesser bid if we needed to by sacrificing any proceeds that we would have received. And the families in Connecticut unanimously chose to do that. And that was an amazing thing to be a part of and to see play out and in my mind protect

the country from people like Alex Jones. All right. We'll talk more about this after a break. We're talking about Robbie Parker's new book, A Father's Fight, taking on Alex Jones and reclaiming the truth about Sandy Hook. I'm Debra Becker. This is On Point. This is On Point. I'm Debra Becker. We're talking with Robbie Parker, the author of A Father's Fight, taking on Alex Jones and reclaiming the truth about Sandy Hook.

Parker's six-year-old daughter, Emily, was among the 26 people killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting in 2012. And, Robbie, before the break, we were talking about the litigation against Alex Jones and one of the pending legal cases, which involves the satirical site The Onion taking over Alex Jones' property.

Alex Jones Media Company, and there's a suit by Alex Jones over The Onion being able to do that. And part of The Onion's bid was bolstered by Sandy Hook's, Sandy Hook families and their settlement. So where is that right now? Is that going forward or how would you explain the status of that litigation at this point? Because it's all bankruptcy courts and auctions and it's very complex.

Yeah, it is. I've had to learn so much about the way the bankruptcy system works than I would ever, ever want to. But yeah, so they're scheduled, I believe, to be a hearing on December 9th, where the judge is going to hear Jones's arguments that he felt like, of course, he was victimized in this somehow, and that things were unfair. And of course, you

you know, everybody's out to get him. And so, and our very solid legal standing of that everything was done in accordance with how the judge had said that these things should be done. So we feel really good about how that's going to turn out. But again, it just shows that everything that Alex Jones has done has, has,

only made things worse for himself. And I really, really wish that his listeners realize that he puts himself in these situations and then he relies on them to get him out of it. And his listeners enable him. And that's why I feel like Jones's listeners are

are victims of Alex Jones themselves. He just introduces hate and lies into their lives and they imbibe that and it becomes a part of who they are and it changes, I believe, who they are as people. And so, yeah,

Sorry, I'm going way off from the bankruptcy question, but there's just so much more at stake here in the worth of what it is that we're trying to do is more than the dollars being talked about from a verdict or from what's going to come out of this auction process. But I was very happy to learn that the Onion, I didn't know that they were a player in this process.

And we were just willing to support a lesser bid to anyone that wasn't an ally of Jones. And so it was great that it, in my mind, turned out the way that it did. It couldn't have been a better company to come in and bring healing, in a sense, in a way that we all kind of need, right? Alex Jones is a known ally of President-elect Trump.

How do you think that might affect things going forward once President-elect Trump is inaugurated next month?

Yeah, I don't know. They definitely use and rely on each other to bolster who it is that they project out into the world. And so, you know, he has other allies. We know that Elon Musk and his company X has filed saying that we aren't allowed to take over Alex Jones's social media accounts. So there's a lot at stake with this. And I do, I know this might sound...

out there a little bit, but like, I still just believe that we have always been stood by the truth and the truth prevailed. And as long as I stay and our plaintiffs and anybody else that wants to join us can just rally behind that. And we stand our ground at the end of the day, we'll come out on top of this because what they do is wrong. And, um,

There's this quote that I've been beloved when I came across it recently from this TV show, but I've applied it to my life. And it's every lie that we tell incurs the debt to the truth. And sooner or later, that debt gets paid. And so however many victories or however much power or money that Alex Jones was able to gain through what he did for 30 years is being taken away from him.

Because it's time for that debt that he put out there on other people and on himself. And it's getting paid. And that's what we're witnessing. You know, there have been a lot of school shootings since Sandy Hook in the past 12 years. Right. I just wonder why.

Are we any better at anything in terms of handling these things? Is it going to not be the case that a governor will walk into a room of families and not know that they haven't been told the status of their young children? I mean, what's a main lesson that we may have learned? Yeah, that...

Let's sit with that question for a second, because sometimes it is hard to see where progress is being made or where even victory lies in something. Right. I think adjusting our expectations on what we feel like is a victory. We relied on on our very top leaders in our country to do something and they failed us. Right.

So if we look at that and say, like, that's what we're looking for and that's our mark for understanding what a victory is, I have a feeling that for a long time they're going to continue to fail us. Victories have happened all over the country in a lot of different ways. My wife, Alyssa, and Joey's best friend. I mean, Alyssa's. My names are getting mixed up. Emily's best friend, Joey, that died with her in her classroom. Her mom and dad.

And my wife, Alyssa, started a school safety nonprofit. And they've done work for over 10 years now, bringing safety to communities. And there are schools that are safer. There are schools that know what to do. There are things that have been prevented because of their work. And that's a very, very beautiful thing. And so us being able to

find out where we can connect with each other, how we can support each other, what we can do together to make our community safer. That's where the change is going to be and that's where the victories are. Why is this such a problem in the United States especially, do you think? What are your thoughts about that? I think people are afraid to do the right thing. I think people are scared about standing up.

I know I was for a long time scared to address the things that are really hard to address and admit the problems that we have and how big they are. And they feel insurmountable, but they're not. I mean, I joke around like, you know, we put a man on the moon in the 60s, right? And we had to figure out to do a lot of things to make that happen. This is a very solvable problem. And it's going to take a lot of people getting the courage to just face it.

everything that you're scared about and address it, address your fears so that we can make things better. And do something about controlling guns? If that's the avenue that you feel is important to you and feel that that works, like absolutely. You know, I've been asked a lot about guns and I just, even with what I've been through, yes, my opinion on it has changed and I have a new perspective, but I keep just going back like Emily didn't care about guns.

And I feel like my journey is and what I want to promote is healing and safety. And there are ways to do that.

through how you feel about guns. And if you feel like there's protections that you would like to be seen, then please go out and do that. If there's, there's, if you're a gun rights person and you are sick of being looked at as this crazy person, because you want to protect something that you care about, then help us make sure that it is done in a safe and secure way. And there's millions of people who feel that way and they want to, there's so many places that we can

find a connection with and understand that the gap between us is not as wide as other people make it to be. You know, in the book, you recount the story of meeting with the father of the Sandy Hook shooter, Adam Lanza. Why did you decide to do that? And what kind of understanding does that bring into all of this, do you think? Yeah, so we had heard that

He had mentioned to his, he had the support team, that he had heard my press conference and that I had expressed compassion for the family of the shooter. I couldn't imagine what it would be like to be a parent and have my child do something like this. And I expressed compassion to what they were going through. He felt like that was like an olive branch. And he expressed that if given an opportunity, he would like to talk with us. Yeah.

My wife and I thought about that for a while. And at the time, we were looking for answers. And he was the only person that was available to be able to release medical records, for example. Things that we could get that we could hopefully glean to understand some of this. So those were some of the motivations. I wanted to meet with him. I wanted to understand more about who he was and who his son was. I wanted to understand what had happened. And it was healing and helpful because he was on the same page. He was also in pursuit of

giving that information out. He wanted, he wanted to understand for himself what had happened and why, and he was willing to meet us there. And that, that was a special, um, it wasn't easy for, I think, either of us, but I think we both got a lot out of it. You know, you open your book in 2022, walking through the Sandy Hook Memorial. Can you tell us a

It sits very close to where the old Sandy Hook Elementary School used to sit. You know, there was a lot of talk for years about do we do a memorial, do we not? What's it going to look like? And how's it going to feel? And I loved the memorial because of its simplicity. I loved that it invokes this feeling of not just what we lost and how, but who these people were.

It allows visitors there to feel what, understand what grief feels like, the way that it's structured and the way that it flows can help people connect to things that are hard on their lives, connect with us. And again, that brings hope and it brings healing. And it's a beautiful thing to be a part of and for me to share with people.

You know, you mentioned deciding to get involved in this lawsuit against Alex Jones after speaking with the family who lost a child in the school shooting at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. And I wonder...

Where is your anger that this is still happening, that what you're going through, is it there? Are you coping with that? Are you angry that we continue to have school shootings? There was just one in California this week. These seem to be almost a regular occurrence.

Yeah, no, that anger comes out. I try and not bring it into interviews. Thank you. Thank you. No, it's definitely there. But anger is such a special emotion. A lot of people are scared of anger because we see it in a way that feels very threatening. And when we see it in ourselves, sometimes we become people that we are scared to acknowledge that we're capable of. But I really...

My relationship with grief and with anger has matured and grown over the years. I used to be so scared of both of these things that I avoided them at all cost. And both of these things, grief and anger, have taught me so much about the world that I live in and about myself. So yes, I get very, very angry when I hear that other people are suffering and having to deal with the same thing that we went through. And it's needless anger.

And there's something we can do about it, and it still happens. That does make me very angry. Right. But also, I mean, you're talking about this beautiful memorial that's been erected where the site of the former Sandy Hook Elementary School was. You spoke about your wife, Alyssa.

helping to found the Safe and Sound Schools organization and improve school safety. Your wife has also written a book. She started a foundation, an arts foundation in Emily's name, The Lawsuits. You've done a lot of work. How do you maintain enthusiasm about this work and not feel that it's futile when these shootings continue?

Yeah, I do feel that way, though, when I hear about it. I do look at all these things and ask myself, what have I even accomplished or what have I ever done? I feel heartbroken in that way and feel like even me going through what we've been through and given a platform to try and do something, wonder what it is that I've even accomplished. Yeah.

So, but we just, we keep going and we do see the fruits of that. Even putting out this book, I was so scared to put this book out and to have a childhood friend reach out to me after he read it and say that he didn't realize what he was going to feel reading the book and that it tapped into things in his life that he needed to heal from that. And he wanted to thank me for that.

Those are things that definitely motivate you to keep going and doing what it is that you're doing because you know it's making a difference somewhere even if it can't be measured. What do you do from here? What's the next thing that you'd like to do to help you continue to remember Emily and to work on this so another family doesn't have to go through it?

Yeah. Like I said earlier, I think, but like, my story is still being told, my process is still being lived out. There's a lot more for me to learn. And there's a lot more for me to give. And I'm in a place now where through my healing journey, I feel like I'm in a place where I can...

She had changed the focus from me and what I'm dealing with and dealing with my demons and my fears and give more. So that's where my focus is. This process brought out other things in me that I needed to address. And another project I have is combating other traumas that I faced in my life. I was sexually abused by my Mormon bishop when I was young. And...

Bringing those things to light and holding organizations and people accountable for the harm that they've done. I want to connect with people. I want to bring healing. And I feel like I can give myself more now. And I'm excited to do that. What's the main message you want people to take away from this book, Ravi? You know, exactly that, what I've been saying. You know, people will hear about the Sandy Hook story. They look at who Alex Jones is. And this all seems so...

fantastically bizarre that they feel like they won't be able to connect with me as a human being because of what it is that I've been through. And I'm just here to say that the hardest thing that you've been through is the hardest thing that you've been through. And there's a way that we can work together on these things. We have the same bucket of emotions to deal with all of this. And so if me sharing my story, I just want people to understand that like,

There's a way that you can connect with me and what it is that I've been through with the things that you've been through. And in doing so, that's brought healing into my life and it can bring healing into your life and you can pass that on. Like that's really the moral of the story. And in doing it, I did get to reclaim who Emily was as a person and share that. I got to reclaim things that are very powerful to me personally. And like I said, I want to use those things and I want to give back.

and help other people experience that same level of healing and joy and have that in their lives, even in the face of them suffering silently from the hardest things that they've been through. Robbie Parker, author of A Father's Fight, taking on Alex Jones and reclaiming the truth about Sandy Hook. Robbie, thanks for being with us. Thank you, Debra. It's been great. Appreciate it. I'm Debra Becker. This is On Point.