{"id":23702,"date":"2022-10-12T17:02:31","date_gmt":"2022-10-12T21:02:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/?p=23702"},"modified":"2022-10-12T17:02:31","modified_gmt":"2022-10-12T21:02:31","slug":"alex-jones-told-to-pay-965m-damages-to-sandy-hook-victims-families","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/2022\/10\/12\/alex-jones-told-to-pay-965m-damages-to-sandy-hook-victims-families\/","title":{"rendered":"Alex Jones told to pay $965m damages to Sandy Hook victims’ families"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has been ordered to pay $965m (\u00a3869m) in damages after falsely claiming the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting was a hoax.<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The families of eight victims, and an FBI agent who responded to the attack, had sought at least $550m in the defamation trial in Connecticut.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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They alleged the right-wing radio host’s misinformation led to a decade’s worth of harassment and death threats.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Twenty children and six adults were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Jones, who founded the conspiracy-laden Infowars website and talk show, argued for years that the massacre was a “staged” government plot to take guns from Americans and that “no one died”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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He now acknowledges the attack was “100% real”, a concession he made in August at a separate defamation trial in Texas.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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As the verdict was read out on Wednesday in Waterbury, Connecticut – some 20 miles (32 km) from the site of the 2012 shooting – many of the families were visibly emotional with some seen in tears.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The three-week trial was marked by emotional testimony from a succession of parents.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Some described receiving a deluge of online hate and others said they had to move homes repeatedly for their own safety. A father, Mark Barden, recounted hearing that people were desecrating his son Daniel’s grave by “urinating on it and threatening to dig it up”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Jurors also heard evidence that Jones and his company, Free Speech Systems, made millions of dollars selling nutritional supplements, survival gear and other products on the Infowars catalogue.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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