Inside a Sandy Hook Father's Fight to Help Bring Down Alex Jones and Reclaim His Daughter's Memory (Exclusive)
"A Father's Fight: Taking on Alex Jones and Reclaiming the Truth About Sandy Hook" by Robbie Parker debuts Tuesday, Nov. 19
It all started with an uncertain smile and a nervous laugh at a press conference a grieving young father didn’t even know he was going to be holding.
On Friday, Dec. 14, 2012, Robbie Parker’s world imploded when his 6-year-old daughter, Emilie, was among 20 first graders and 6 educators who were killed in one of the worst mass shootings in U.S. history at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.
Inundated with calls from reporters, Parker, a neonatal intensive care unit physician’s assistant from Utah, “naively” agreed to make a statement to a Utah news station at a Newtown church for family and friends there to see and hear, he tells PEOPLE.
Shocked when he was met with a throng of reporters and news crews who gathered to hear him honor his beloved daughter’s memory the day after the shooting, he smiled nervously and gave an awkward half-laugh when his father made a well-meaning “dad joke” to calm him, he says.
What happened next devolved into an unthinkable nightmare that included years of harassment, hateful name-calling and death threats. Parker and his wife Alissa were still in the firehouse near the school waiting to hear whether Emilie was one of the tragedy's victims when InfoWars host and far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones falsely told his legions of followers that the shooting was a government hoax carried out to restrict gun rights. After seeing Parker smile before the press conference, he declared that Parker was a “crisis actor” who never lost a daughter.
Parker details his unbelievable, gripping journey in his new book, A Father’s Fight: Taking on Alex Jones and Reclaiming the Truth About Sandy Hook, which comes out Nov. 19 from Diversion Books.
“What's evil about what Alex Jones did is that he came in and made the very complicated process of grieving, dangerous,” says Parker. “He inflicted these lies and conspiracies about who I am and who Emilie was in a way that harmed me and my family. He was doing that because he made millions of dollars. That's what's evil about it.”
Joining other victims’ families, Parker fought back in court and won. In Oct. 2022, a Connecticut jury awarded Parker, seven other victims’ families and an F.B.I. agent nearly $1 billion in compensatory damages after suing Jones for defamation. The next month, the judge added $473 million in punitive damages to the defamation lawsuit.
Related: How a Sandy Hook Mom Came to Forgive the Shooter Who Murdered Her Daughter
Parker gives readers a front-row seat to the trial, including what he thought when he first saw Jones in person in the courtroom, "walking funny" and "looking disheveled and worn down," he says, "I was just like, my gosh, he's just a very sad, pathetic man."
Even after he was awarded $120 million, the largest settlement out of all the families affected, Parker says he isn’t sure how much of that money he and the others will ever receive. “The verdict sends a message to other people that want to be the next Alex Jones that they can't because they're going to be held accountable,” he says.
And, he adds, “What I really got out of this whole ordeal was the fact that I got to reclaim my voice, take back things that were mine and heal.”
A Father’s Fight also details what happened on the excruciating day Parker and his wife Alissa lost their oldest daughter and how over the next months and years, he began turning inward, in an effort to protect himself and his family.
He writes about how Jones’ incendiary rhetoric fired up his army of listeners, who sent hate-filled messages to him calling Emilie vulgar names, threatened him and even accosted him in public four years after the shooting, accusing him of lying about her death.
Parker says the harassment he and other victims' families received made him feel guilty and ashamed, causing him to withdraw even further from his friends and family.
Related: 5 Years Later, Newtown Victim's Sisters Put Letters in Her Stocking for Santa to Take to Heaven
“I held onto that shame, thinking that they went through this because of me,” he says, adding that the harassment “separated me from my ability to grieve ... So much of the grief process was stolen from me.”
He also shares some hard truths he learned along the way about why he turned inward to cope with everything coming at him. “Now I can look back and see a full circle, that had been my coping mechanism since right after I had been abused as a child,” he says. “It’s been an interesting process seeing how Emilie’s death helped me heal my own childhood wounds.”
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And while he was initially hesitant to join other families in their defamation lawsuit against Jones, Parker writes about the jarring incidents that made him finally agree to stand up to him in court.
“Nobody's going to be able to relate to me if they only think about me in terms of fighting Alex Jones in court,” he says. “But we’ve all been through hard things and like me, a lot of people suffer in silence. I came to find that opening up, sharing and connecting with who you are allows you to be able to connect to other people. That's what really brings healing.”
What Parker hopes readers take away most from his book are the beautiful memories he has of his kind-hearted, happy-go-lucky little girl and how he wants her legacy to shine on.
On her last day alive, Emilie, “a notoriously early riser,” greeted her dad at 6:45 a.m. with a sunny “Bom dia!” and “te amo” in Portuguese, which they were learning together. “After a hug,” Emilie skipped off to snuggle Alissa in bed, “because Emilie never simply walked anywhere.”
These days, when he thinks of Emilie, Parker says, “I just know that she loves and cares about us just as much as we do about her. And yes, we're separated, but we're connected still. I feel her. And so maintaining that connection, that's what's important.”
A Father’s Fight: Taking on Alex Jones and Reclaiming the Truth About Sandy Hook, comes out Nov. 19 from Diversion Books and is available now for preorder, wherever books are sold.