The father of a victim of the Newtown, Connecticut school shooting has won a defamation suit against the publishers of a book who claimed the shooting never happened, The Associated Press reports.
Lenny Pozner, whose 6-year-old son Noah was killed in the December 14, 2012 shooting, along with 19 classmates and six adults, has been fighting back against conspiracy theorists who claimed that the shooting was a hoax. His victory over the publishers of the book, Nobody Died at Sandy Hook , is the latest victory against the conspiracy.
Why Conspiracy Theorists Claim It Was A Hoax
The publishers of the book in question are not alone in suggesting that the Sandy Hook school shooting never happened. Almost as soon as images and video of the aftermath of the shooting were hitting the media, the claim was being made by people such as right-wing radio host Alex Jones and multiple others that the shooting was a hoax.
But why?
The claim is that the shooting was staged in order to produce a so-called “false flag” attack that would stir up anti-gun sentiment and lay the groundwork for stricter gun laws, The Vancouver Sun reports. Some even go so far as to say that the government hired so-called “crisis actors” to pretend to be grief-stricken parents or townsfolk for the TV cameras.
“Nobody Died at Sandy Hook” publisher apologizes to dad of murdered boy https://t.co/WdSLHIxNxY pic.twitter.com/hE25CEHL88
— CBS News (@CBSNews) June 18, 2019
Fighting Back
The fact that some are insisting that their children didn’t die in a mass shooting, and that it was all a hoax intended to force through new gun laws, has not sat well with the parents of the murdered children — Lenny Pozner in particular. Pozner and others have fought back against those claims, largely through defamation lawsuits, some of which they’ve won.
The victory over James Fetzer and Mike Palacek, authors of the book mentioned at the beginning of this article, is the latest. On Monday, a Wisconsin judge ruled that Pozner had been defamed by the authors of the book, and ordered that they will be liable for damages, as yet to be determined. The trial to determine how much the authors owe will be held in October, according to The Jewish Telegraphic Agency . The book has been pulled from store shelves.
Some of the more alarming claims in the book were that Noah’s death certificate was faked; that Noah’s parents were portrayed by crisis actors; and that Noah never existed.
Pozner, meanwhile, continues his campaign against Sandy Hook deniers. In a separate case, he’s suing the publishers of the book, and he’s a party to at least seven other cases related to Sandy Hook conspiracy theories as well.