Daughter of Sandy Hook principal: Alex Jones verdict ‘empowered me to become the person I once was’

Erica Lafferty lost that part of herself which would console the outcast and stand up to the bully when harassers who denied that her mother died in the Sandy Hook massacre became so numerous that they “swallowed her whole.”

“That part of me was largely taken,” Lafferty told Hearst Connecticut Media on Thursday, one day after a Waterbury jury awarded her a share of the $965 million Alex Jones must pay in damages to eight families for calling the slaying of her mother Dawn Hochsprung and 25 other educators and first-graders at Sandy Hook Elementary School “staged,” “synthetic,” “manufactured,” “a giant hoax,” and “completely fake with actors.” “For the last 10 years, I have been trying to find that person.”

While Lafferty’s $76 million share of the eye-opening jury award won’t bring her mother back or erase the “hell and torture I’ve been through for a decade,” the sheer size of the $965 million verdict and the clear line it draws about the liability of conspiracy lies gives Lafferty the grounding she needs to take her life back.

“The jury came back with a message so powerful and poised and strong that the public will not tolerate this,” Lafferty said of six-member jury, who heard four weeks of emotional and sometimes confrontational testimony, including a vicious exchange while Jones was on the stand. “I am empowered to become the person I was once was.”

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Lafferty is referring to the second of three jury trials to award damages to Sandy Hook families Jones defamed. A Texas jury in August awarded $49 million to parents of a Sandy Hook boy Jones defamed. A second Texas trial is planned for early December where a jury will decide how much Jones must pay parents of another slain Sandy Hook boy.

Jones laughed on his Infowars broadcast as the verdict was being livestreamed on Wednesday, saying he didn’t have $1 billion.

As difficult and traumatizing as it was for Lafferty to sit through the four weeks of tearful testimony about harassers urinating on a child’s grave and angry confrontations from strangers calling family members liars, Lafferty said she found strength in solidarity with the members of eight families and the FBI agent in the courtroom with her.

“This past month gave us the opportunity to hear about each other’s loved ones and our current lives and where we have been and what we are doing and where we want to go, and I am so thankful for that,” Lafferty said. “I wasn’t expecting to get that out of this. I am so happy for the time I was able to spend with them.”

The hardest moment of the trial for Lafferty was not necessarily her time on the witness stand when she told the jury about the rape threats she received on the internet that police could not track or when Jones at the end of his day of testimony told the courtroom: “I’ve already said I’m sorry 100 times and am done saying sorry. I legitimately thought (the Sandy Hook massacre) might have been staged and I stand by that, and I don’t apologize for it.”

Instead, the hardest moment for Lafferty was when a fire alarm sounded in the middle of Sandy Hook dad Mark Barden’s emotional testimony.

Marshals cleared Waterbury Superior Court and calmly directed people outside.  

“The second my face felt the air I broke down into a full-blown panic attack,” Lafferty said. “Other family members were holding me and rubbing my back and telling me to breathe through my nose and helping me at a time when they were also terrified.”

Other difficult parts of the trial for Lafferty were the pained confessions of FBI agent William Aldenberg and Sandy Hook dad Robbie Parker, who said because they were the early targets of Sandy Hook deniers the two men felt guilty for bringing harassment to other families.

“When they said on the stand they felt responsible that just broke my heart,” Lafferty said. “They are two of the best men I have ever known.”

What happens next, Lafferty says, is a new chapter in a continuing story of hate and harassment. What’s different after the jury verdict, Lafferty says, is that a new ending to the story is emerging.

“Money is the only thing Alex Jones cares about — it’s the only way to punish him for an empire he has built on hate and lies,” Lafferty said. “The goal of this for me was to try in some way — any way — to prevent other families of high-profile shootings from enduring the hell and torture I have been through for a decade.”

Reach Rob Ryser at rryser@newstimes.com or 203-731-3342