'My Mom Was Killed at Sandy Hook, Alex Jones' Harassment Was Sickening'

On October 12, Alex Jones was ordered to pay $965 million in damages to 8 families of victims of the Sandy Hook shooting as well as one FBI agent, but I think I am still a little bit in shock. I knew going into this trial that it would be big, but I didn't fully realize the magnitude of the message we were sending. Of course, I hoped our voice would be loud and strong, but never in my wildest dreams did I think a jury would be so clear: Alex Jones' actions were not okay.

What they did, not just for our families and not just in that courtroom, but the precedent they set for people like Jones, was nothing short of historic. I am proud to have been a part of it and so incredibly thankful.

Jones has been in my life for nearly a decade, but not by choice. I was in my late twenties when my mother, Dawn Lafferty Hochsprung, the principal of Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, was killed on December 14, 2012. Within days of the shooting, I heard people online saying it was a hoax; the whole thing had been staged and the families were acting. I just thought: "How can people be saying this?"

Over time, I began to connect the dots and figured out who this Alex Jones guy was. I realized much of this rhetoric was stemming from the lies and the hate he was spewing to his audience.

It was the first time I had ever experienced anything like this. I had grown up in a small town and outside of sporting events I had never even been in the newspaper. So, to have to grieve the murder of my mom in such a public manner was a whole beast in itself. I was never given the opportunity to mourn her in my own way. I was forced to do it on this international platform.

Knowing there was also someone out there who was brewing this conspiracy was sickening. I didn't know if this kind of online harassment was going to last, if it was something Jones himself would stop doing. I hoped he would and tried to ignore it, but it got so big and so constant and so scary that it couldn't be ignored anymore.
Within a few months I became a specific target for threats, including violent rape threats online.

When I got married in July 2013, there were pictures of my wedding all over the internet. In one article, I told the story of the last conversation I had with my mother, on the morning of the shooting. I had these turquoise custom Converse sneakers I wanted to wear when I got married and she was like: "You're not really going to wear those are you?" It was a funny conversation, up until the day she died she was laughing at my little "Erica-isms." Yet conspiracy theorists online even claimed my wedding was fake.

The frequency of this harassment depended on Jones and how often he spoke about Sandy Hook. Whenever he spread his conspiracy theories the abuse amped up. There was sometimes a day or two that I would have some peace. Then there were months on end where every single day I would be called an actress or accused of making up my own mom. I would be sent pictures of the school or these doctored photos claiming it wasn't even open on the day of the shooting, all of these crazy things. It was constant, I literally couldn't keep up.

Because of the harassment, I don't like going out in public anymore. I don't like crowds and I stopped going to the grocery store. Since 2013, I've had my groceries delivered; bought everything online. Whenever I purchase clothes, I have to order the size I think I am, then one up and one down and then return the ones that don't fit. It's one of the weird little ways I have had to adapt to all of this, that has just become normal to me. I have a really hard time remembering when things weren't like this.

I had an initial conversion with Josh Koskoff, one of the lawyers for the families of Sandy Hook victims, in the summer of 2016. He had already earned the love and the trust of the families after working together on previous cases. He just said to us: "There is a way for us to take some action." They did a ton of research to make sure we weren't going to open these gates for nothing. He and his team, Chris Mattei and Matt Blumenthal, did so much research to make sure they had everything they needed to support us and to prove to the world that this man had just kept kicking us when we were down. The team carried us and then the families just kept saying: "We're going to do this. We're going to come together and do this."

I think taking legal action against Jones did further open ourselves up to his very extreme audience. I feel like we had to put ourselves out there and continue taking hits from him and his followers in order to take back our lives and stories, but also to protect other people, which I think is the best way I ever could have chosen to honor my mom.

My strength comes from my mother. If you had the opportunity to spend two minutes in a room with my mom, you would see she was the most courageous person in every way. For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to be like her. I just wanted to make her proud and I wanted to, like she did every day of her life up to the second of her death, protect people.

We have been in this legal process for nearly four years and the jury's decision was so overwhelming. This weight was lifted, this hard piece of it is finally done. I do not think it will be the end of Jones or the end of harassment for me and other families, but I think that a precedent has been set, that it's not okay to do this to people. I really think we took huge strides in preventing future families of high profile tragedies from having to experience this cycle of abuse, which we had to endure for nearly a decade.

I am so incredibly grateful to have spent the past few months getting to know more about other victim's families; what their lives have turned into, the work they're doing, hearing about their surviving kids and reconnecting with people I spent time with during the earlier years. It's been a very overwhelming process, but I am so thankful.
Alex Jones built an empire from making up lies about people. Being a part of this lawsuit, being a part of what is going to stop him doing this to other people, is one of the things I am most proud of in life.

I am so incredibly thankful to the jury. Listening to days upon days upon days of testimonies and our personal stories could not have been easy, but they sat there, taking in our trauma, and were just so brave. They paid attention and cared and I am just so incredibly proud of them. I just wish I could personally thank them all, they really sent a loud message and did an incredible thing for me, for the other Sandy Hook families, for our hero FBI agent and for our country.

My sister and I started a memorial fund in honor of our mother in the aftermath of her death. There was money pouring in from everywhere, but we didn't want it. We wanted to do something with it that our mother would have wanted. When she was growing up in Naugatuck, Connecticut, mom was captain of the swim team and ran track. When she first arrived at high school there was no track team for girls, so she decided to try out for the boys team. The coach at the time was not a fan of that idea, so she decided to write a letter to the state and ended up getting funding for a girls track team.

That's a large part of why we decided for the memorial fund to give a scholarship to a Naugatuck High School senior every year. The Dawn Lafferty Hochsprung Memorial Fund scholarship is awarded each year to a senior who has "Dawn-like" qualities. It's always someone who is looking to pursue a career in education. We look for strong leadership qualities and kindness is a huge part of it. If they happen to be an athlete that's all the better.

When the fund initially started everyone on the selection committee either knew personally or knew quite a bit about my mom and as the years go by the precedent will be set by the students who have been awarded it. I know one day there will just be this whole little club of "Dawn-like" educators out there and that makes my heart so happy.

Erica Lafferty is an activist from Connecticut and the daughter of Dawn Lafferty Hochsprung. You can follow her on social media at @ericalaff or find more information about the Dawn Lafferty Hochsprung Memorial Fund here.

All views expressed in this article are the author's own. As told to Monica Greep.