KEY POINTS
  • Robbie Parker wrote a book about the battle to reclaim the truth of Sandy Hook Elementary, which is where his daughter Emilie, 6, was murdered.
  • Alex Jones used his Infowars platform to claim the shootings didn't occur, but admitted in a Texas court he knew they were real.
  • Parker was part of a defamation lawsuit against Jones and won a large judgment, though he doubts he will collect most of it.

Robbie Parker is no stranger to life-altering challenges. A physician’s assistant in a neonatal intensive care unit, he’s seen families at their most vulnerable and their most frightened as their babies struggle to survive.

But he’s also lived with his own tragedy and challenges in a way most people would find unimaginable.

Parker’s daughter Emilie, then 6, was one of 20 children murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School on Dec. 14, 2012. Six adults were also killed.

Emilie Parker was one of 20 children killed by a shooter at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012. Her father, Robbie Parker, wrote a book about that day and the aftermath, when conspiracy theories flew that the shootings never happened. | Parker family photo

As he and his wife Alissa reeled, trying to comfort themselves, each other and Emilie’s little sisters, Samantha and Madeline, they found themselves at the center of a storm created by talk show host Alex Jones. Using his Infowars radio platform, Jones blasted out the message that the shootings at the grade school never happened. He said they were a hoax to enrage people so the government would take away guns. He called the Parkers and other families who lost young children or adults that day “crisis actors,” and soon fans were harassing them, with attention particularly focused on Robbie Parker.

At first, Parker said he shrank back in a bid to escape unwanted attention and hate-filled claims. Eventually, though, he joined a lawsuit against Jones filed by others who’d lost someone at Sandy Hook.

Alissa Parker and Robbie Parker carry their daughters to a limo after a funeral for their 6-year-old daughter Emilie Parker, who was one of 20 children killed Friday in a shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., at the Rock Cliff Stake Center in Ogden on Saturday, Dec. 22, 2012. | Kristin Murphy

Two lawsuits were filed against Jones. And in a Texas court in 2022, Jones had to admit he knew the shootings were “100% real” and that calling the Sandy Hook school attack a hoax was “irresponsible.”

Juries who considered the defamation lawsuits against Jones filed in Connecticut and Texas sided with the families, who were collectively awarded more than $1 billion. Parker’s award was the biggest, since he was singled out so pointedly and painfully.

Parker, who lives with his family near Portland, Oregon, said he’s unlikely to get much of the money, but added some might trickle down as a federal bankruptcy judge ordered Jones to liquidate his personal assets, as reported by The Associated Press. Parker said he joined the lawsuit to set the record straight.

Robbie Parker, center, cries into his hands during the community memorial vigil at Ben Lomond High School in Ogden for Emilie Parker, one of the children murdered during the recent school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary, Thursday, Dec. 20, 2012 | Ben Brewer

The price of being silent

For Parker, the lawsuit was never about financial gain, he told the Deseret News. But a jury’s award happens to be how the legal system is set up in a civil trial to hold someone accountable and “try to get some justice,“ Parker said.

What did drive him was realizing he’d lost himself while trying not to engage with the false claims being made about Sandy Hook. He thought his silence would keep his family safe. But it didn’t. And just wishing things were different didn’t solve anything.

He simply could not stand that Emilie was being lost amid the noise, he said. He’d lost her once, but couldn’t let others sully her memory.

It bothered him greatly that his precious daughter had become a weapon in the hands of those who didn’t even know her. He said he knew he needed to fight for her and to show her little sisters, Samantha and Madeline, that he would always fight for them.

So, shaking off his qualms, he joined a lawsuit that had already been filed against the Infowars host.

Alissa and Robbie Parker were among 26 families that lost loved ones in the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting in 2012, where their daughter Emilie was killed. Robbie Parker's book about the aftermath was just published. | Parker family photo

Journaling to figure himself out

After Emilie’s death, Parker said he had started writing down his private pain and thoughts, which over time would evolve into the book “A Father’s Fight: Taking on Alex Jones and Reclaiming the Truth About Sandy Hook.” The book was published a few weeks ago.

“The book was never meant to be seen,” Parker said recently in a phone interview. “I was just trying to understand my grief process. I felt stuck and was not progressing, so I started writing.”

He’d begun to learn, though, that as he shared his pain and Emilie’s story, people shared their own stories back. Those exchanges created healing and hope on both sides of the conversation. “Not a lot of people can relate to my experience and people think I might not be able to relate to theirs, but you find out that you can and that just started bringing a lot of healing,” he said.

He emphasized that there’s no point or even way to compare personal challenges and tragedies, because “the hardest thing you’ve faced is the hardest thing you’ve faced.” People do, however, share the same “bucket of emotions” from which they try to cope. So instead of comparing, people can learn from each other.

What he never addressed when sharing his experiences after Sandy Hook with others early on was the conspiracy theories that circled his family like a whirlpool, trying to pull them under.

That changed during the lawsuit, Parker said, when he regained his voice and decided to battle conspiracy theories. But he adds that had someone predicted the awfulness of what had happened to his family, “I would not have believed it. I knew that people had made videos, like (claiming) that 9/11 was an inside job.” Initially, to him, “those always seemed funny and kooky.” Seeing such damage up close, however, in his own life, dispelled any notion such talk is humorous or harmless.

His experience taught him “how scary and dangerous” conspiracy theories can be. “That was a scary experience.”

Parker said he’d become disconnected and unsure of who he really was, but amid the turmoil he found he wanted to fight for his family’s truth. He said now that his early choice to protect his family by not fighting back was also a scary one because by making it, he gave up his power.

“I am not trying to beat myself up,” he said. “I stayed quiet and I didn’t engage and I didn’t fight, which seemed appropriate at the time. We had just lost Emilie. We were deep in grief. And we had people that were really scary. We had just experienced what somebody is capable of doing to somebody else. The shooter didn’t know who I was, didn’t know Emilie. And these conspiracy people through Alex Jones were given a reason to hate me and I had a target on my back.”

Parker was also fighting for himself. “I had to fight to reclaim those things I had given up. And that’s what the trial provided me.” Leaving the witness stand after testifying, he said, he knew he’d accomplished what he needed to. Jones had to take back what he’d said about Sandy Hook. And he would lose what he’d gained by saying it.

“The verdict was just validation to speak to the harm, for other people to understand the harm that had been caused. But for me, I had already gotten everything I set out to achieve,” Parker said.

Nobody wanted this

As Parker describes the time leading up to the trial and the trial itself, he sounds somewhat sad for Jones, too. “It sounds weird for me to say this, but I know he didn’t want this to happen. It took a lot for me to even join the lawsuit. And he’d built this empire over the course of 30 years and everything’s going to be taken away from him because he was more in love with the power and fame and everything that it brought him. He was more interested in the lies than he was about the truth.”

Related
A mother's voice. Remembering Emilie a year after Sandy Hook
Robbie and Alissa Parker on 10 years after Sandy Hook

Parker said he thinks often of a quote he calls a “universal truth” that he encountered in an unexpected place. It was part of the dialog in a TV movie about Chernobyl that went something like this: “Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. And sooner or later, that gets paid.” He believes the court’s judgment levies payment of a debt to truth.

Writing the book, said Parker, was a cathartic process. And telling his story to others and listening to theirs has deepened his connection to other people. He believes people cross each others’ paths and can leave “positive and beautiful marks” on each other, if they are willing.

And he has loved writing about Emilie, a child who remains so loved.

Helen Thompson leaves a message on a sign for 6-year-old Emilie Parker, who was one of 20 children killed Friday in a shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., near the Rock Cliff Stake Center in Ogden on Saturday, Dec. 22, 2012. | Kristin Murphy, Deseret News

Moving forward

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Emilie would be 18 now. He’d have three older teens at home right now had she lived, he said with a chuckle. Madeline just turned 17 and Samantha will soon be 16. His daughters today are strong and he describes them as resilient. “They know how to speak up for themselves and what they understand their truth to be and they’re not afraid to tell people and to live that way. I find it just so amazing how strong and resilient they are. They’re doing things that I’m just learning to do at 43.”

Amid all he lost, Parker said he’s gained a lot in the last dozen years. “Challenges and tragedies brought up opportunities to learn who I am. It would be great to do it in other ways, but I was not going to reject the chance of growth.”

While he became front and center in the lawsuit, Parker is happy these days with what he calls a “supporting role” in his family. He’s supporting his wife through schooling as she studies to become a social worker. He’s supporting his daughters as they prepare to launch into the world as adults. He’s supporting families of fragile babies as they fight to grow stronger.

While he’ll always happily work in neonatal intensive care, he said he’ll also keep working on his own growth and exploring other interests that show he is making progress, including by doing more writing.

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