The mother of a six-year-old boy murdered in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting has testified in the Alex Jones defamation case, and spoke directly to the right-wing Infowars host about the devastating impact of his conspiratorial claims.
Scarlett Lewis and Neil Heslin, the parents of Jesse Lewis, are suing Jones and his company Free Speech Media for $150m over the harassment they say they suffered after the 2012 shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.
“Jesse was real,” Ms Lewis told Jones as he sat in the courtroom in Travis County, Texas, as she testified on Tuesday. “I am a real mom.”
She added: “I wanted to tell you, to your face, because I wanted you to know that I am a mother, first and foremost. I know that you’re a father,” Lewis told Jones.
“And my son existed. You’re still on your show, today, trying to say that I am — implying — that I’m an actress. That I’m ‘Deep State.’ You have. This week. And I don’t understand.”
She went on to tell Jones that even he did not believe his own outrageous statements about the shooting.
“I am not deep state...I know you know that...I know you believe me, yet you’re going to leave this courtroom and say it again on your show,” she said. “Do you have the capacity to put yourself in my shoes? Do you have empathy?”
Jones has claimed on his show that the shooting, in which 20 children and six adults were massacred, was a “false flag” operation involving paid actors.
“I think you know that Sandy Hook is real and that it happened... But I don’t think you understand, at all, the repercussions of going on air with a huge audience and lying and calling this a hoax... You don’t understand that.”
At one point, Ms Lewis asked Jones if he really thought she was an actress.
“Having a six-year-old son shot in his forehead in his classroom is unbearable. ... And then to have someone on top of that perpetuate a lie that it was a hoax, that it didn’t happen, that it was a false flag, that I was an actress — You think I’m an actress?”
“No, I don’t think you’re an actor,” he replied before the judge admonished him and told him to remain quiet.
She also told Jones that the truth was “vital to our world” and “what we base our reality on.”
“We have to agree on that to have a civil society,” she continued.
Sandy Hook is a hard truth. A hard truth. Nobody would want to ever believe that (20) kids could be murdered. Nobody would ever want to believe that. I understand people not wanting to believe that, actually — I don’t want to believe it.”
She told the court that in the wake of the shooting she could not return to her own home, but when she did she found a message on a chalkboard that her son had spelled out phonetically that read, “Nurturing Healing Love.”
“I have, since that day, dedicated my life to keeping kids safe,” Ms Lewis told Jones.
“It’s our responsibility. I used to think it was a school responsibility, it’s actually our responsibility. I have dedicated my life to that, and having a quarter of Americans doubt that Sandy Hook happened or doubt the facts around Sandy Hook is not conducive to keeping our kids safe.”
She then told the jury that she was testifying to “get you to stop” and to put an end to “the fear that you’ve put people in from your following.”
“This isn’t staged, like one of your people said,” she told Jones.
“This is a real event. It seems so incredible to me that we have to do this, that we have to implore you, punish you, for you to stop lying. Saying it’s a hoax. It happened. It’s surreal what is going on here.”
“I hope to accomplish an era of truth. An era of truth. Please.”
