Despite having forgiven internet conspiracy theorist Alex Jones for his repeated assertions that the deadly mass murder was “manufactured,” Scarlett Lewis, whose 6-year-old son Jesse was one of those slain in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy, says she still wanted to hold him responsible.
At a court hearing last week, Lewis described her first encounter with Jones in person: “I could only feel sympathy for him.”
“What I really saw was simply a man—a suffering human being who was alone and without witnesses. There was nobody with him.”
For many years, Jones maintained that the massacre, which is still among the bloodiest in American history, was a “false flag” operation carried out with the objective of tightening gun laws in the nation.
Of public forums, Jones called Lewis and other relatives of the shooting victims in the atrocity “crisis actors.”
However, Jones said in evidence earlier this month that it was negligent of him to claim the massacre was a fabrication and that he now believes it was “100% true.”
Lewis said that she thinks Jones is sorry for continually disseminating the inaccurate information.
She said on Tuesday: “I feel that he realises that Sandy Hook occurred, that he’s made horrible decisions, and that he might make other choices moving ahead. “I believe he wants to.
Occasionally, I believe, avarice gets in the way.”
Neil Heslin, the father of Lewis and Jesse, sued Jones and his media business Free Speech Systems in 2018 and demanded at least $150 million in compensatory damages for turning their lives into a “living nightmare.”
Last Monday, a Texas jury ruled that Jones must pay $4.1 million in compensatory damages along with $45.2 million in punitive penalties.
Lewis said that she thought the judgement was “fair” and that her counsel “essentially begged the jury to choose love over fear and prejudice, and they did.”
Lewis, who is now the creator of the charity Jesse Lewis Choose Love Movement, said that her mission is to “convey a message about the value of truth” in addition to compassion.
Lewis observed, “Our individual power as people is in our capacity to choose in each moment how we consciously react.
“The effective option is to respond with love. It feels nice and will result in a world that is safer, more tranquil, and more loving.
And every day, starting with the time we wake up, we have a choice in everything.”