In 2017, Robbie Parker, father of Emilie Parker who tragically died in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, sat in a grief session feeling stuck. “I was just like, ‘I feel like I just keep saying the same things, getting angry at the same things, and I just wanted to process it,’” he told TODAY.com.
What began as a personal attempt to understand his grief evolved into something much bigger — his memoir A Father’s Fight: Taking on Alex Jones and Reclaiming the Truth About Sandy Hook, which was published on November 19, 2022.
Parker’s daughter Emilie was one of the 26 victims, including 20 children, killed in the horrific shooting on December 14, 2012. In the aftermath, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones relentlessly spread lies, claiming the shooting was a “hoax” on his Infowars platform. This fueled harassment and a widespread conspiracy theory that targeted Parker and other families of the victims.
Determined to fight back, Parker joined other families in a defamation lawsuit against Jones and Free Speech Systems, the parent company of Infowars. “I had given up my voice,” Parker says of his decision to take action. Writing his memoir and testifying in court allowed him to reclaim it.
The memoir’s first chapter details both the painful day of the shooting and the trial against Jones, which took place in September 2022, a decade later. For years, Parker struggled with guilt and shame over the way Jones twisted his emotions. At a press conference just after the tragedy, Parker had been criticized for seemingly “smiling” in the footage, which Jones used to label him a “crisis actor.”
“I spent so many years literally hating myself for that,” Parker admits. “I know it wasn’t my fault, and I know I couldn’t have seen it happen, but what that moment did… I couldn’t think about it without feeling disgust for myself.”
During the trial, Parker recalls a powerful moment when his attorney, Chris Mattei, played the full footage of his press conference. “He no longer controls this,” Parker says, reflecting on how, in that moment, he took his voice back. Jones, who had once called the shooting a hoax, was eventually ordered to pay $1.5 billion in damages to the families, with Parker receiving $120 million, the largest share.
Despite the financial award, Parker emphasized, “We wanted to make it as hard as possible for Alex Jones to spread the harm and the lies that he has done”, reported by MSNBC.
Throughout his memoir, Parker shares deeply personal memories of Emilie, including a touching story of how she once made him a plate of food after he missed their nightly routine. “She felt things really deeply and profoundly,” Parker recalls. “That’s the thing I miss about her the most. I miss being around somebody that could show me how that works.”