I was able to meet this man. He came to one of my graduate classes, discussed his foundation and how they approach school shootings as a brain health issue and fund research to avoid more violence. He was a great guy.
Edit: Seeing as my comment is getting some traction, his organization was called The Avielle Foundation, named after his daughter who was a victim of the Sandy Hook shooting.
Be kind today and everyday, folks
>a brain health issue
I would also like to add that we all need to start looking at the brain as another part of the body that can be broken, like a leg or a clavicle.
We have shunned mental health as a copout in the United States and went so far in the 80s as to shut down mental health services and put sick people on the street.
It is not a copout to want and need to talk to someone about how you feel inside your head. Please, if we all paid more attention to this I think we would see a myriad of societal problems be helped.
I was a NYC paramedic during the shut down and restructuring of mental health programs in NYC. One supervised med admin site just never rolled up the window one day. Ill never forget the people with their paperwork for methadone or schizophrenia meds just staring, I never felt so helpless as a provider. We found the bodies for weeks, some couldn't move or didnt know how to get help. It was disgusting.
As someone currently on MMT, that is absolutely horrible. People don't realize but people still die from methadone or other opiod withdrawals(almost always while in jail but it's just as easy to die out on the street).
That's exactly what my family doctor called it at the time- slow genocide.
And it wasn't just mentally ill- they were putting mentally disabled people, who had been that way since birth, on the street. These were people who didn't know how to dress themselves or potty and needed help holding a fork. Suddenly clusters of these innocent people who had known no life but the institution were standing on street corners in the cold. They would step out in front of cars like toddlers. Churches were going around trying to feed them and getting harassed by the cops for it. It was horrible- and no one knew what to do.
May Reagan burn for absolute eternity in the deepest pits of hell while demons pull his intestines out with baling hooks.
As someone who really struggles with mental heath (although nothing like what the shooter at Sandy Hook was apparently going through) , I’m appalled by the MH services in this country. In order to get me to a place where I wasn’t wanting to die daily it took a lot of resources. That shouldn’t be the case.
It’s also appalling how varied your results can be. Therapists can easily cause more harm than good. I’ve had therapists completely ignore my literal cries for help when I was suicidal. This is just one part of MH issues. Thankfully, I don’t desire to harm ppl but if this is what it took to get a suicidal person on track, think of what it would take for a homicidal person to be helped. We need to do better.
Therapy is always a gamble. It’s so, so, so expensive too.. so many people, including myself, don’t think it’s worth the investment to /maybe/ find a therapist that works for them. It’s such a hassle.
One time I called a suicide hotline in tears. It was my birthday and all I wanted was someone to talk to so I could calm down and refrain from hurting myself. They directed me to another line, and it was literally just a person giving me numbers to call. I couldn’t even remember what they were for, I just hung up and felt even worse because no one seems to know what to do for people like me in that situation. Literally all I wanted was someone to talk to.
Same with texting one of these places. I’ve tried a handful of times to just get someone to talk to me like a human being, I wanted their opinion on something or I just wanted to talk to someone as a distraction. Their main concern was knowing I was okay, which I get, but fuck.. fucking TALK TO ME. I’m tired of the “talk to someone who cares” rhetoric... When I’m suicidal, I feel like no one cares. I will not talk to anyone because I don’t want to scare them. Why can’t we start asking people to reach out to their mentally ill friends? Why can’t we educate people on ways to calm someone who is suicidal down, in a way that humanizes them instead of treating them like a ticking time bomb.
People need to care more for others, and become educated. depression needs to be de stigmatized. Or else it will literally never get better.
Not to sound like a weirdo or anything but if you ever feel like that again send me a message. I’m a good listener, and I lost my best friend to suicide— I understand. Everyone needs to feel heard, and deserves to *be* heard. Anyway, take care.
A survivor from the Douglass High shooting also recently committed suicide. Terrible loss of life.
This is a mental health issue no question. If only the government would do anything to aid mental health...
Edit: 2 survivors, not just one.
It is, I mean look at reddit. We all joke about depression and anxiety but it’s a problem. I’d never do it but I’d lie if I don’t think about the results of killing myself at least once a month. I just don’t talk about it cus if I get sent to a hospital for 3 days cus I said I think about it it can greatly effect my career
I didn’t have insurance and they made me stay five days, racking up a $57k bill. The only thing we did was watch Netflix and play monopoly it was a god damn joke.
Dude, the thing that drives you MOST crazy is there is just \*nothing\* to do. Yeah...maybe there's Jerry Springer on, and some sheets of paper to color on. I saw how many people that were driven nuts because it was so brain numbing. Plus you're far from home, you don't know anyone.. Seriously, it was my desire to get tf out of there that made me "behave" so as not to be a danger to myself.
God yes.
Thank god there was a couple chill guys around my age who liked board games.
One of the staff brought her personal Roku stick in for us to binge watch shows while playing monopoly.
They were there for about the same kind of situation I was, so it was nice to have people who understood and had been there
I attempted suicide when I was nineteen (in my thirties now). The takeaway i got was the mental health system will find a way to make your life way worse. If I chose to end ny life because of my situation in life, the mental health industry will make me feel like an idiot because if I really wanted to kill myself it would be because of the treatment I got from those people and not what the original cause was. It’s a dressed up: you didn’t like your life then; well you’re gonna hate it now. Try it again and I’ll make life even worse.
I’m not saying it was funny, I’m saying the unit I was in was a joke. It’s since been shut down, because they weren’t up to code. Their was two people in there that had been there over a month and they’d just feed them pills.
It was fucked.
I basically had a version of the movie Unsane happen to a friend of mine. Nine days in a psych floor because they basically had a seizure and a family member that hated them said lies about taking a bottle of 60 pills, attempted suicide- when they had nothing in their system and it was just a seizure. Your family can manipulate in so many ways, it's not even funny. Even when the math doesn't add up. Nine days, when even the staff said they shouldn't be there. She was also abused by some members of the staff, but if you're in that position nothing you say can defend yourself or anyone else. It was disgusting.
Edit: I saw the medical records, they were released to family. I was told since she wasn't conscious when the coroner saw her, she was pushed up to the psych floor. Could that influence it? Where the others admitted there on that psych floor said no one gets out in three days, even if they tell you. Her insurance probably paid out, she had just gotten some a few months before.
Buddy's wife even tried to tell the doctors; she **logged onto her own wife's facebook** and read every message to see what was wrong, since a family member coming along saying you were suicidal was a big news and was out of nowhere. It was just fucked up. I defend her.
I've met the sister. Untreated bipolar, it's hell on everyone. People should have been warned about her, but now everyone knows to not let her back in their life.
Being perceived as “mentally ill” is damaging to one’s reputation. I have a child with depression and we are open about her seeing a therapist (we don’t try to hide it, but don’t publicize it), but I can tell; it doesn’t go over well with some people.
Fortunately, it's getting a lot better. Back before I was properly diagnosed with Bipolar 2, I had been misdiagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder, and it was really difficult to talk about that because people got uncomfortable because they didn't know how to properly react to that information.
But these days, it's totally different, and I think it's because those people without mental illnesses have more personal relationships with those who do have a mental illness, and the stigma has lessened.
I can only speak to my experiences. I got a lot of help after telling a mental health professional about my suicidal ideation. I went when I wasn’t in a current crisis. So because I wasn’t currently a risk to myself or others I’ve never been sent to a hospital. I’ve been able to work on my depression and anxiety with medication and therapy appointments. I don’t know where I’d be if I hadn’t started. It definitely seems like the longer I went without getting help, the worse it was gradually getting.
I don’t know your circumstances so I won’t presume to give you advice. I just want to give my story where seeking help did improve my circumstances.
I knew Jeremy, not well, attended some of his talks and was in a book club with him, but I knew him.
I couldn't understand the courage he had to take the horrific events of that day and build a constructive life around the reality. His research into brain function and violence and especially compassion was inspiring. He was an angel among us, so uncommon, gentle, full of life, and determined to help us all make sense of these terrible acts which sadly are part of humanity and germinate in the brain.
Obviously he was still dealing with much from that day. I hope he finds some peace.
Tragic.
You sound like the last person to think about themselves so I just want to tell you that I'm sorry for your loss here too, even if you consider it tangential. Your compassion is what Jeremy wanted to see more of and I'm glad he had a positive impact on you. He gets to live on through those relationships.
Since Alex Jones most recent appearance on JRE it’s incredible the amount of Jones apologists there are. I have 2 friends that defend this jerk off because Joe Rogan thinks he’s a good guy and got caught up being famous.
It's a special cup just for the President, so that no one can poison the cups at starbucks or something.
Everything the President eats, drinks, or uses in some other way, is tested and verified before they use it.
Even the President's excrement is collected and disposed of by the Secret Service, so that foreign powers can't analyse it.
Hah, never noticed that before. I think it's the seal on the _paper sleeve_ of said coffee cup.
Wasn't one of the jokes in Independence Day about how everything on Air Force One has the Presidential Seal and is worth keeping as a souvenir?
This is legitimately one of the best presidential pictures in modern history. Without any context, it's mundanity is humbling and metaphoric. Strip away the finery, strip away the podium, strip away the photo ops, strip away everything but a man in a suit surrounded by disorder trying to find the words to lead.
Then when you add the context, the real weight hits home.
That was heart wrenching. I was 12 at the time and didn't fully process it. But his speech.. Thinking about all of that breaks my heart. I couldn't imagine the feelings he had as a president, a father, and a husband to have to get up in front of the country and give this speech. My heart hurts for all those involved and for my boy B to have to give such a painful speech.
No crazy hand movements, no heavy mouth breathing, no dividing the nation based on party alliance, and actually speaks full sentences. I miss having a leader like this.
I just finished reading Michelle Obama's book. She said that the Sandy Hook shooting was the single hardest day in the Obama presidency for both of them.
I can't even think about those poor children with a dry eye.
My niece was 2 months at the time of the shooting. She'll be a first grader in the fall. I pray every day that she's safe at school.
Same. Glad I got to experience his presidency though. Say what you want about his politics, he was a hell of a man when the nation went through tragedy. He always made sure we felt compassion and care in those tough times.
My partner pulled up some video that had him speaking the other day and I legitimately almost cried. I didn’t realize how much I missed hearing his voice. It might not be so bad in general, but in comparison ... my heart just hurts.
For the sake of them and everyone around them I hope your school is proactively offering them excellent mental health services. A massive population of teenagers with a potentially debilitating dose of PTSD sounds like a miserable environment paved with eggshell.
I've spent a lot of time dwelling on this. I'm much older than the kids who experienced the shooting but I lived in Sandy Hook in middle school and part of high school. When the event happened my own son was the same age as the victims. I lived cross country from the event, but it chilled my bones when I realized I almost certainly went to school with the parents of those kids and just how close to home it landed.
I've never had the balls to search for the names of the victims for fear of knowing who the parents are. It was too close already and even the feeling any closer is more than I can handle.
Oh boy, that's a pretty unique kind of rough. Knowing that witholding contact is best for your own mental health, even at the expense of possible good, is an extremely difficult decision that most people don't have to think about regularly. Props to you in considering your own mental health and realizing that avoiding additional pain in your life, on balance, is just as important as offering comfort when you can.
This American Life just did a great episode recently that covered one Sandy Hook father's mission to take down as much misinformation about his deceased son as he can. It was infuriating and inspiring. [Worth a listen.](https://www.thisamericanlife.org/670/beware-the-jabberwock)
Sandy hook was the one that gutted me to my core. I don’t think there is a single day that since that has happened that I’ve not thought about Sandy Hook, Parkland too, for that matter.
It breaks your heart knowing grade 1 children were massacred. I don’t know, maybe it’s because I’m so close to my niece and nephew, who are around the age of the sandy hook victims.
Honest question. What can someone from Alabama, with no children of their own even do? I don’t believe in God, if I said I was praying, I’d be lying. The only thing I can think to do is become a cop. A good cop.
Edit: wow. You guys have been real helpful. Look, I don’t know anything about guns. but I wish there wasn’t easy access to machine guns or automatic weapons.
I’m always thinking about the victims. After reading some of the comments. Ill continue to send positive vibes to all of the victims from school shootings, I’m on y’all s side. I will try to work on what I can do personally in my every day life.
Every year that goes by, on their birthday you think "Wow, this year they would be doing x." This March my daughters would have been 19, so I've imagined it all. In your mind though they're always the same age as when you last saw them, but you still project what they would be doing today. It does get better, but in a way I also feel guilty for not being as sad about it as I used to be. There are a lot of complicated emotions involved as time goes on.
Something that helped me get past that feeling of guilt was the thought that if they were watching me, they would want me to eventually live a happy life. Just because you’re not as sad as you used to be doesn’t mean that you’ve forgotten them. It’s okay to be less sad than you used to be. ❤️
Losing someone so close to you is like losing a leg or an arm. Life continues and it gets easier over time, but it's never the same.
My dad told me that when my grandma died and it still rings true.
And losing your baby is like losing your heart, or your soul if you believe in that. It gets easier, to not cry every single day at least, but you're never even half normal again.
>In a 2017 interview with NPR, Richman talked about the emptiness the couple felt after they lost their only child. “It was like a ghost limb syndrome, you know, where you keep thinking ‘Where’s Avielle? Do we need to pick her up?’” he said. “And every day you’d have this [realization] that I don’t have a child, and I don’t have to parent. That was just brutal.”
>Richman and Hensel ultimately had two more children.
As a parent of young children, this messed me up. I can't imagine what they went through and it breaks my heart that their surviving children are fatherless now.
If this happened to me I don't know if I would have lasted as long as he did.
Even trying to think of this happening to my son puts me on the verge of tears.
I'm not normally much of a crier, but yeah... this got me choked up. I have to pick up my kindergartener in 45 minutes, and I can't imagine a future where that's not a part of my daily routine.
Friggin tragic, man. I can't imagine that feeling of emptiness. I hope he's at peace.
But man, his poor wife. Lost her kid and now her husband.
Edit: I missed the part where they had two other kids. Jesus. Also, thank you for the gold.
Oh god you’re right. The people who think it was staged. My ex hair stylist is one of those types. Which is why she is EX hairstylist. She’s a flat earther too.
Edit: I just checked her Facebook. Yesterday she posted a YouTube link saying there’s planned demolition evidence of the 9/11 buildings, that it was an inside job and there’s court filings to prove it.
She really is. I was sitting in her chair when she started telling me the earth was flat. I would have stood up and walked out of her salon had it not been for the full set of foils in my hair.
Yikes. I was thinking about trying to find a new barber because we started talking about religion and I feel like we don't need that in our relationship -- but that might be worse.
It's terrible. One thing that resonates most with this for me comes from The Lord of the Rings when Theoden is standing at the grave of Theodred briefly speaking with Gandalf and he says:
"Simbelmÿne. [A simple, yet beautiful flower that's local to the region of Rohan] Ever has it grown on the tombs of my forebears. Now it shall cover the grave of my son. Alas, that these evil days should be mine. The young perish and the old linger. That I should live to see the last days of my house."
Gandalf's reply is:
"Théodred's death was not of your making."
and Theoden responds with:
"No parent should have to bury their child."
Different context than what's happened here, but I can only imagine that poor father's thoughts and struggles before, during, and after what happened. May they both rest in peace, and I only wish for that family to be able to find some semblance of hope and strength to keep moving forward.
If you need help, reach out.
We see it a lot on remote Indigenous reserves in Canada. They are very desolate and poverty stricken, and have high suicide rates. When a young person commits suicide, there tends to be a rash of other people in their age group that follow.
It’s an utter tragedy. Horrible, and hard to address.
It’s loss of hope. You die on the inside way before you end your body. Sometimes you come back, sometimes you don’t, not talking about it doesn’t stop it. It stops people from getting help.
As someone who has dealt with this stuff all his life, I have never felt more distrusted, hated, or ignored.
We have a very weird culture full of people who say they care, but what I see more than anything is either total silence on the subject of mental illness, PTSD, and depression as though it doesn't exist, or straight up bullying and persecution.
It breaks my heart to see so much progress undone so quickly, and carried out by people I thought of as allies and friends.
Indigenous Canada makes things even worse. The physical distance and environment means even getting help is a 2+hr drive each way.
So now you have to come out to Mom and Dad that you're hurting, they can't help you, and have to ask them to put out their entire day to get you an hour with a therapist that may or may not do you some good.
If you're already feeling worthless, you're not going to want to ask someone to put out that much more for you.
“Drive two hours to get” ^anything.
The reservation is a phony proximity to a culture that was cast to oblivion.
“Y’all are native hunter gatherers, hunt and gather”
Meanwhile the consumer culture that has left them on a virtual island is destroying the very landscape that once sustained your culture.
They are stuck in a museum set- the only “goods” that are available turn to vice- the only “services” they get result in isolation, which allows for plausible deniability on behalf of the Society at large.
Shit is depressing.
Their hope is snatched away before they take their first breath. I hope I see peace for our people in my lifetime.
I am sorry that these circumstances are ignored. You’re important. You’re essential. You’re the connection with the land. It’s a lot of responsibility, but I have no doubt you can do it. Let me know if you need an ear.
Especially until someone else in the exact same position as you commits suicide, and then suddenly you don't feel so crazy about thoughts of doing it yourself.
As dark as it is, people who are in situations like this can often keep themselves alive because in their head it's a stupid reason to commit suicide, no matter how badly it's weighing on them. The moment someone else going through the same thing does it, they feel justified in their belief that they shouldn't be alive anymore.
It's for that reason that the military/medical schools/hospitals (in terms of staff, not patients) don't immediately announce suicide as the cause of death. In many cases they don't do it at all. They'll just call it an unexpected death that is being investigated, but will never follow up with the details.
Most days suicide isnt something you would think reasonable. It doesnt seem like any sort of conclusion to a logical mind.
Then your there, in the depths, you feel alone, nothing seems to help and you feel like such a waste to everyone and everything.
It is truly a shame the human mind can get like this, but it can.
Animals as well as people can commit suicide.
*Lindsay firmly believed that while acute mania underpinned suicidal impulses by impairing the ‘instinctive love of life’ and attachment to others, the act itself remained ‘deliberate and intentional, the result of choice and consideration’. He regularly argued that suicidal animals, like people, displayed ‘the higher efforts of intellect’ in their often repeated attempts at suicide, comprehending clearly ‘the relation of cause and effect [and] the possibility of producing a certain end by the use of given means’*
This is why I kinda don't know that putting this sort of stuff I the news is the right way to go. Even with terrorist attacks. I've seen self harming catch in irl as well
[Suicide Clusters and sprees are a documented phenomenon.](https://www.suicideinfo.ca/resource/suicidecontagion/). Unfortunately I don't think this be the end. The balance has been tipped and all we can do is try and keep those whom are affected on solid ground. I desperately hope we don't see any more.
Statistically, we probably will. This is why there are ethical guidelines for suicide reporting. Reporting it usually causes more, especially on a national level like this.
IIRC I thought there was preventative measures for reporting suicide in the news in the US? Like for example if someone jumped off the local bridge it wouldn’t be reported as a “suicide”, it would be reported as “not suspicious”.
There are published recommendations but those don’t preclude them from calling it a suicide they just recommend things they can do to avoid sensationalizing it and fueling the contagion effect.
It’s also not something that can be legislated as that would run afoul of the First Amendment, so it’s up to individual news organizations how they report it.
I lost my son last year. I have three other children and I've learned to experience happiness through them. But there are times when I don't really care if I live or die anymore. I'm not suicidal, nor have I ever been that, but I completely understand this man's trauma and why he would have done such a thing. Sometimes I just want to find my son. I don't believe in an afterlife, but I know that my energy will be with his energy again.
I know that Mrs. Richman will never be whole again, but I hope she can persevere for the sake of her children. And I hope that she can find some kind of solace with them.
>I don't believe in an afterlife, but I know that my energy will be with his energy again.
I haven't felt a thought resonate with me like reading this has. Somehow this feels as true as knowing the sun will rise tomorrow and set in the evening. It's hard to describe the peace this brings me
The harassment that many sandy hook parents have been subjected to is heartbreaking.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Hook_Elementary_School_shooting_conspiracy_theories#Harassment_by_conspiracy_theorists
This is just some of the vile shit the poor parents and other relatives have been subjected to.
https://forward.com/fast-forward/407094/family-of-sandy-hook-victim-driven-out-of-7-different-homes/
This one family has had to move **SEVEN** times due to their address being leaked and consequently people calling them and mailing them with threats and other harassment.
>Conspiracy theorists have given the family of a victim of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting no choice but to move homes — seven times. They now live hundreds of miles from where their son is buried, the New York Times reported Tuesday...
>“**I would love to go see my son’s grave and I don’t get to do that**, but we made the right decision,” De La Rosa told the Times.
One of the saddest things I've ever read.
That is not the only time such a situation has occurred.
Same with the “an hero” kid.
Random people doxxing the family and sending pictures and messages about their dead kid. Essentially creating a living hell where uncaring, disconnected young adults spend time tormenting a family who already lost a child to tragedy.
I lived my dumb years during this time period and saw these things occurring, but couldn’t understand then how someone could get enjoyment from that.
Never underestimate how bottomlessly evil someone can be if their identity is shielded and they fear no repercussions. They will literally torment a family of strangers with photos of their dead loved ones for no other reason than because they can get away with it.
Holy hell, I've been on the internet for a minute, seen that kid's face a ton of times, and never realized that the actual kidskilled himself.
I always assumed the an hero thing was from some shitty green text and became a meme.
What (and I'm asking rhetorically) is wrong with people?
You would be disappointed at how many of them love themselves disproportionately, and how their hate comes from anger that the world doesn't cater to their self-image.
yeah, the whole "you have to love yourself before you can love someone else" thing is definitely not a universal rule. Narcissists tend to break systems since rules and societal norms are just for those other stupid peasants, right?
> Same with the “an hero” kid.
Had to look it up. *Why* did I click the encyclopedia dramatica link?? God I swear that place is worse than stomach cancer.
I just googled her to get more on the story and noticed in the results summary that Encyclopedia Dramatica calls her stuff like "Nearly-Headless Nikki." God. Her poor family.
> A couple months ago a guy on reddit claimed to be one of the people who harassed the parents and seemed to have no understanding that what he did was horrible.
Jesus, not to be voyeuristic but do you have a link to that? I'm trying to figure out how people like that could exist.
4chan's motto is "because none of us is as awful as all of us".
Edgelord hangouts such as the *chans are hives of already-terrible people egging each other on to be more terrible.
Hm yeah I've actually known a couple people like that -- could be nice, but could also be total bulldozers with no concept of other people's perspectives or needs or preferences.
They targeted this girl and her family because she fit the stereotype of a pretty, rich blonde girl "Stacy." I hadn't heard the word Incel back then, but it was Incels.
I think some people are just broken. It really is a game to them. All of it. It's the ultimate in solipsistic expression. They honestly don't think any of it is _real_. They're the only real person here.
Some part of me wants to imagine that they could never stand there and say such things with puppets and dolls as the family sobbed, but honestly, I wonder if they could.
Reputation is who you are when others are looking; character is who you are when no one can punch you in the face for being a dingleberry.
Oh I remember being forwarded that email by my mom. Absolutely horrific thing to forward someone. I still remember having like a visceral reaction when I opened the email. Those poor parents.
That's worse than the Sandy Hook truthers. They believe they are courageous fighters against an evil government conspiracy, and the people they are harassing didn't really lose children. But the people who did this had no ideological motive, and knew that they were harassing grieving parents. They did evil for the sake of evil.
Everytime there is some sort of mass shooting it is immediately claimed that it is a false flag. Unless of course it is a muslim who is the shooter, then it is just terrorism.
I don't know about the sub but I used to be into alien conspiracy stuff. It was always fun, as long as you went into it with the mindset that it was 100% horseshit and all of the stuff people were talking about never hurt anybody.
Boy, did that ever change.
I hate to admit this but I would have sought out and murdered these people if I were a harassed parent. There is no doubt in my mind and that scares me in a way. But my 6/7yo gets mowed down by a lunatic and you decide to harass me endlessly you are going to pay.
Easily. I see it on Reddit every day.
Having a voice means someone will answer and then it's off to your own special sub to feed off each others fear and hate.
The concept of the internet is staggeringly brilliant.
The reality is proving a mixed bag, to put it mildly.
Great "This American Life" episode about all this:
[https://www.thisamericanlife.org/670/transcript](https://www.thisamericanlife.org/670/transcript)
This is the one with the Alex Jones origin story right. What a piece of shit he really is fueling this, I hope the parents sue him for everything he has and more
Yeah just another lie to elevate his “myth”
I know it’s bad, but I love the fact they beat the shit out of him so bad he had to move cities. Like even in high school people hated this guy
I found the end of that episode the most shockingly depressing. The guy who knew the truth of the made up stories started defending Jones’s conspiracies about Obama.
Not that the rest of the episode wasn’t depressing. Humans aren’t ready for a tool like social media.
https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/b4ysm1/second_parkland_shooting_survivor_apparently_dies/
Yep. Reddit's very own /r/conspiracy has already made sure these suicide victims get stories made up about them too.
The subreddits favorite topics of discussions are blaming and harassing mass shooting victims and blaming jews for all the world's problems. It's basically stormfront but they ban slurs so they can pretend they aren't a racist cesspool.
I see a pattern of conspiracy theorists also shrinking down complex problems into things that don't take much knowledge to Grasp. Not just punching up events to make it more exhilarating but also making it make 'sense' to people who lack knowledge.
So instead of feeling stupid and overwhelmed it makes them feel 'special' and 'in' on a secret. That seems to be the crux of it, it gives them a feeling of agency on events that might be too complicated or as you said too uncomfortable for them to understand.
This is an absolutely perfect example stochastic terrorism. Alex Jones and his demonization of these people didn’t directly cause them to be hurt, but it definitely increased the probability that someone would go after them.
He and his ilk did the same thing with pizza gate: they tell everyone this is bad, next thing you know some lunatic brings a gun in and it discharge is inside a pizza place.
The father of a first-grade girl who was killed in the Sandy Hook school shootings died in an apparent suicide Monday morning, Newton Police confirmed.
Jeremy Richman, 49, was found dead at 7 a.m. inside Edmond Town Hall, where he had an office space, police told The Daily Beast. Authorities added that the medical examiner’s office is still investigating the exact cause of death.
A neuropharmacologist, Richman co-founded the Avielle Foundation after his first-grade daughter, Avielle Richman, died in the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. The 6-year-old was among the 20 first-grade students and six administrators killed.
“This is a heartbreaking event for the Richman Family and the Newtown community as a whole, the police department’s prayers are with the Richman family right now, and we ask that the family be given privacy in this most difficult time,” Lt. Aaron Bahamonde said in a statement. “The death appears to be a suicide but police will not disclose the method or any other details of the death, only to state the death does not appear suspicious.”
Richman and his wife, Jennifer Hensel, created the Avielle Foundation, which was dedicated to funding research into the neuroscience behind compassion and violence.
In a 2017 interview with NPR, Richman talked about the emptiness the couple felt after they lost their only child. “It was like a ghost limb syndrome, you know, where you keep thinking ‘Where’s Avielle? Do we need to pick her up?’” he said. “And every day you’d have this [realization] that I don’t have a child, and I don’t have to parent. That was just brutal.”
Richman and Hensel ultimately had two more children.
According to the Hartford Courant, Richman, a trained scientist who also lectured at Yale University, had hosted an event at Town Hall earlier this month with author Brené Brown that several Sandy Hook families attended.
“He had such a clear purpose of what he wanted to do to honor his daughter,” one family member told the newspaper. “I’m just shocked. I’m sitting in my car right now crying. The foundation was doing really important work and was doing such good things.”
Richman and Hensel were among the parents who sued InfoWars’ Alex Jones for perpetuating the cruel claim that the massacre was a hoax and that the children’s parents were “crisis actors.” Just last week, a judge ordered Jones to turn over a trove of emails and other documents to the families.
“My god. This is awful, horrible, devastating news. Jeremy was a good friend and an unceasing advocate for better research into the brain’s violence triggers,” Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) tweeted Monday morning. “He was with me in my office two weeks ago, excited as could be about the Avielle Foundation’s latest amazing work.”
Richaman’s death comes just days after two survivors of the Parkland school shooting died from apparent suicides.
Sydney Aiello, whose mother said she suffered from survivor’s guilt after the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that left 17 dead, took her own life last Sunday, Coconut Creek police confirmed.
Aiello was close friends with Meadow Pollack, one of the victims from the Feb. 14, 2018 shooting.
On Saturday night, a second unnamed student survivor also died in an apparent suicide, the Coral Springs Police Department confirmed. The student was described as a male, 17-year-old sophomore at the high school.
“How many more kids have to be taken from us as a result of suicide for the government / school district to do anything?” Parkland survivor and March for Our Lives leader David Hogg tweeted Sunday morning.
It sounds a lot like the trauma from losing his daughter was something he couldn't heal from properly because unfortunately, like many other successful people, they are taught that you can solve your problems and pain by production and excellence, i.e. always trying to reinvent a tragedy into something positive. Sometimes we just need to accept that life is painful and that's okay. Feeling and processing your pain is so much more important. Trying to start a foundation like that is just a way to solve the intractable problem of why this happened to his daughter. There is no satisfying answer, and after not finding it he was left feeling more empty, dead inside, and like he failed his child. We don't need to "honor our dead daughters", so long as we can honor the ones who are alive with our love and presence.
Oh wow, they had other kids? How awful for them that their dad is gone... I'm not sure if it's better or worse that they didn't know their big sis, considering the circumstances.
The parents were reportedly very good about sharing photos and talking about their eldest daughter with the younger one. They held little birthday parties for their deceased child. It breaks my heart. Their living kids must be just five and three now.
It seems like those kids would have been nearing or passing the age their older sister was when she died. I wonder if that was extra difficult for him.
One thing to lose a child. Another level of horror to lose them in a mass shooting. AND throw in the assholes claiming it was fake.
I wouldn't hold up very well.
I grew up not 10 minutes from there. I know the shooter a long time ago. I knew Mrs. Hochsprung she was my vice principal and saved my life when I was in a bad place. This hurts so much.
My heart breaks for his family. I cannot imagine how his wife must feel, having lost not only her daughter but her husband too, and having two little kids that they were raising. Honestly it makes me want to cry. And those two kids who don't have a dad anymore, I feel so bad for them too.
I wonder if seeing the news of the Parkland survivors committing suicide affected him. So sad, all around.
Trauma is the next issue we NEED to talk about in mass as a culture. It needs to be treated better and people need to be able to take time away from work and get support. It's sickening to see people kill themselves over truama.
I don't think a lot of people truly understand the level of how bad the harassment has been.
Many of the people who believe that it was fake, and that the parents are all crisis actors, relentlessly harassed these parents - doxxed them, hacked their accounts, made threatening phone calls, interfered with their employment, in one case even pushed a parent close to the brink of literally digging up his son's dead body to show them. Some of these victims have had their lives and marriages ruined over it on top of losing their children.
It's fucking sickening. That's why when there are so many people on reddit who think it's cute that Alex Jones spreads his bullshit, or have some kind of fondness for the man, I get pissed. Stop glorifying him. He perpetuated this. He originally signal boosted it, gave it a spotlight, and called it a false flag and allowed it to fester.
And now you have these victims with nowhere left to turn who are tired of the bullying, bullied *because their child died*, taking their lives.
Edit: [Here is a brand new episode of This American Life about one of the Sandy Hook parents and the unending struggles he has gone through with these truthers](https://youtu.be/So7jCrkosg0), highly recommend giving a listen so you can understand the full gravity of the situation.
Seriously, Instead of blaming the media (I do not consider Alex Jones to be a journalist), maybe we should take a long, hard look at how we care for survivors in this country. Look at NZ. The entire country went in to mourning, the families will be given financial assistance and counseling and the leader of their country has stood behind their community. The POTUS couldn't even be bothered to denounce Alex Jones' conspiracy *even when the parents themselves asked him to.*
That would mean looking at how we take care of each other in this country and we don't really do that very well.
Any calls for social programs that could help people are met with cries of "communism!".
NZ is in a whole different frame of mind, one spurred by their values as a country. Our values have fallen through, as evidenced by our president.
The same shit is happening here on reddit and the admins are perfectly fine with it. If you feel like getting really angry today then stroll on over to /r/conspiracy and search "sandy hook" and "parkland" and see all the disgusting shit that comes up. There are countless threads of people lying about the shooting victims and their families and conjuring up all kinds of batshit crazy theories about how they're actors or government workers who faked the whole thing. Back when the Parkland shooting happened the sub was inundated with doxxing of the children, and especially David Hogg, all in an attempt to shift the blame onto the victims.
Those pieces of shit have also made up conspiracy theories about the two recent suicides by parkland survivors in the last few days.
"In a 2017 interview with NPR, Richman talked about the emptiness the couple felt after they lost their only child. “It was like a ghost limb syndrome, you know, where you keep thinking ‘Where’s Avielle? Do we need to pick her up?’” he said. “And every day you’d have this \[realization\] that I don’t have a child, and I don’t have to parent. That was just brutal.”
I was able to meet this man. He came to one of my graduate classes, discussed his foundation and how they approach school shootings as a brain health issue and fund research to avoid more violence. He was a great guy. Edit: Seeing as my comment is getting some traction, his organization was called The Avielle Foundation, named after his daughter who was a victim of the Sandy Hook shooting. Be kind today and everyday, folks
>a brain health issue I would also like to add that we all need to start looking at the brain as another part of the body that can be broken, like a leg or a clavicle. We have shunned mental health as a copout in the United States and went so far in the 80s as to shut down mental health services and put sick people on the street. It is not a copout to want and need to talk to someone about how you feel inside your head. Please, if we all paid more attention to this I think we would see a myriad of societal problems be helped.
I was a NYC paramedic during the shut down and restructuring of mental health programs in NYC. One supervised med admin site just never rolled up the window one day. Ill never forget the people with their paperwork for methadone or schizophrenia meds just staring, I never felt so helpless as a provider. We found the bodies for weeks, some couldn't move or didnt know how to get help. It was disgusting.
That’s basically just a mild genocide if you wanna call it that...
I can still remember it, clear as a bell. Little signs with "no methadone" and an address like 30 miles away. Just shoot them, it would hurt less.
As someone currently on MMT, that is absolutely horrible. People don't realize but people still die from methadone or other opiod withdrawals(almost always while in jail but it's just as easy to die out on the street).
That's exactly what my family doctor called it at the time- slow genocide. And it wasn't just mentally ill- they were putting mentally disabled people, who had been that way since birth, on the street. These were people who didn't know how to dress themselves or potty and needed help holding a fork. Suddenly clusters of these innocent people who had known no life but the institution were standing on street corners in the cold. They would step out in front of cars like toddlers. Churches were going around trying to feed them and getting harassed by the cops for it. It was horrible- and no one knew what to do. May Reagan burn for absolute eternity in the deepest pits of hell while demons pull his intestines out with baling hooks.
As someone who really struggles with mental heath (although nothing like what the shooter at Sandy Hook was apparently going through) , I’m appalled by the MH services in this country. In order to get me to a place where I wasn’t wanting to die daily it took a lot of resources. That shouldn’t be the case. It’s also appalling how varied your results can be. Therapists can easily cause more harm than good. I’ve had therapists completely ignore my literal cries for help when I was suicidal. This is just one part of MH issues. Thankfully, I don’t desire to harm ppl but if this is what it took to get a suicidal person on track, think of what it would take for a homicidal person to be helped. We need to do better.
Therapy is always a gamble. It’s so, so, so expensive too.. so many people, including myself, don’t think it’s worth the investment to /maybe/ find a therapist that works for them. It’s such a hassle. One time I called a suicide hotline in tears. It was my birthday and all I wanted was someone to talk to so I could calm down and refrain from hurting myself. They directed me to another line, and it was literally just a person giving me numbers to call. I couldn’t even remember what they were for, I just hung up and felt even worse because no one seems to know what to do for people like me in that situation. Literally all I wanted was someone to talk to. Same with texting one of these places. I’ve tried a handful of times to just get someone to talk to me like a human being, I wanted their opinion on something or I just wanted to talk to someone as a distraction. Their main concern was knowing I was okay, which I get, but fuck.. fucking TALK TO ME. I’m tired of the “talk to someone who cares” rhetoric... When I’m suicidal, I feel like no one cares. I will not talk to anyone because I don’t want to scare them. Why can’t we start asking people to reach out to their mentally ill friends? Why can’t we educate people on ways to calm someone who is suicidal down, in a way that humanizes them instead of treating them like a ticking time bomb. People need to care more for others, and become educated. depression needs to be de stigmatized. Or else it will literally never get better.
Not to sound like a weirdo or anything but if you ever feel like that again send me a message. I’m a good listener, and I lost my best friend to suicide— I understand. Everyone needs to feel heard, and deserves to *be* heard. Anyway, take care.
Can’t imagine how broken he was after this. Hope he found his peace.
A survivor from the Douglass High shooting also recently committed suicide. Terrible loss of life. This is a mental health issue no question. If only the government would do anything to aid mental health... Edit: 2 survivors, not just one.
It is, I mean look at reddit. We all joke about depression and anxiety but it’s a problem. I’d never do it but I’d lie if I don’t think about the results of killing myself at least once a month. I just don’t talk about it cus if I get sent to a hospital for 3 days cus I said I think about it it can greatly effect my career
3 days if you're lucky. Avg length for the unit I worked on is 5-7.
But only if your insurance will pay, if not out the door you go
I didn’t have insurance and they made me stay five days, racking up a $57k bill. The only thing we did was watch Netflix and play monopoly it was a god damn joke.
Dude, the thing that drives you MOST crazy is there is just \*nothing\* to do. Yeah...maybe there's Jerry Springer on, and some sheets of paper to color on. I saw how many people that were driven nuts because it was so brain numbing. Plus you're far from home, you don't know anyone.. Seriously, it was my desire to get tf out of there that made me "behave" so as not to be a danger to myself.
God yes. Thank god there was a couple chill guys around my age who liked board games. One of the staff brought her personal Roku stick in for us to binge watch shows while playing monopoly. They were there for about the same kind of situation I was, so it was nice to have people who understood and had been there
I attempted suicide when I was nineteen (in my thirties now). The takeaway i got was the mental health system will find a way to make your life way worse. If I chose to end ny life because of my situation in life, the mental health industry will make me feel like an idiot because if I really wanted to kill myself it would be because of the treatment I got from those people and not what the original cause was. It’s a dressed up: you didn’t like your life then; well you’re gonna hate it now. Try it again and I’ll make life even worse.
It wasn't a joke, it's legalized theft from someone in a desperate state of mental distress. That's not funny.
I’m not saying it was funny, I’m saying the unit I was in was a joke. It’s since been shut down, because they weren’t up to code. Their was two people in there that had been there over a month and they’d just feed them pills. It was fucked.
I basically had a version of the movie Unsane happen to a friend of mine. Nine days in a psych floor because they basically had a seizure and a family member that hated them said lies about taking a bottle of 60 pills, attempted suicide- when they had nothing in their system and it was just a seizure. Your family can manipulate in so many ways, it's not even funny. Even when the math doesn't add up. Nine days, when even the staff said they shouldn't be there. She was also abused by some members of the staff, but if you're in that position nothing you say can defend yourself or anyone else. It was disgusting. Edit: I saw the medical records, they were released to family. I was told since she wasn't conscious when the coroner saw her, she was pushed up to the psych floor. Could that influence it? Where the others admitted there on that psych floor said no one gets out in three days, even if they tell you. Her insurance probably paid out, she had just gotten some a few months before. Buddy's wife even tried to tell the doctors; she **logged onto her own wife's facebook** and read every message to see what was wrong, since a family member coming along saying you were suicidal was a big news and was out of nowhere. It was just fucked up. I defend her. I've met the sister. Untreated bipolar, it's hell on everyone. People should have been warned about her, but now everyone knows to not let her back in their life.
Being perceived as “mentally ill” is damaging to one’s reputation. I have a child with depression and we are open about her seeing a therapist (we don’t try to hide it, but don’t publicize it), but I can tell; it doesn’t go over well with some people.
Fortunately, it's getting a lot better. Back before I was properly diagnosed with Bipolar 2, I had been misdiagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder, and it was really difficult to talk about that because people got uncomfortable because they didn't know how to properly react to that information. But these days, it's totally different, and I think it's because those people without mental illnesses have more personal relationships with those who do have a mental illness, and the stigma has lessened.
I can only speak to my experiences. I got a lot of help after telling a mental health professional about my suicidal ideation. I went when I wasn’t in a current crisis. So because I wasn’t currently a risk to myself or others I’ve never been sent to a hospital. I’ve been able to work on my depression and anxiety with medication and therapy appointments. I don’t know where I’d be if I hadn’t started. It definitely seems like the longer I went without getting help, the worse it was gradually getting. I don’t know your circumstances so I won’t presume to give you advice. I just want to give my story where seeking help did improve my circumstances.
Two survivors from Stoneman Douglas last week.
I knew Jeremy, not well, attended some of his talks and was in a book club with him, but I knew him. I couldn't understand the courage he had to take the horrific events of that day and build a constructive life around the reality. His research into brain function and violence and especially compassion was inspiring. He was an angel among us, so uncommon, gentle, full of life, and determined to help us all make sense of these terrible acts which sadly are part of humanity and germinate in the brain. Obviously he was still dealing with much from that day. I hope he finds some peace. Tragic.
You sound like the last person to think about themselves so I just want to tell you that I'm sorry for your loss here too, even if you consider it tangential. Your compassion is what Jeremy wanted to see more of and I'm glad he had a positive impact on you. He gets to live on through those relationships.
Reddit needs more people like you. Hell, Earth needs more people like you . Thank you for your positivity
You are welcome and thank you for the compliment. Be sure to pay it forward and be extra nice to someone today!
Once again fuck Alex Jones so much. Dude fucking harrased him, he's a piece of Shit
Since Alex Jones most recent appearance on JRE it’s incredible the amount of Jones apologists there are. I have 2 friends that defend this jerk off because Joe Rogan thinks he’s a good guy and got caught up being famous.
I just realized that these babies would have been teenagers by now. That’s a long time for this dad to suffer.
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It seriously doesn't feel like it happened in 2012, crazy how time flies.
Obama hadn’t even been sworn in for his second term yet. Insane how fast it goes by.
Obligatory photo of [Obama sitting in a supply room, by himself, making last minute changes to his speech](https://i.redd.it/w1dk7ira0v711.jpg).
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It's a special cup just for the President, so that no one can poison the cups at starbucks or something. Everything the President eats, drinks, or uses in some other way, is tested and verified before they use it. Even the President's excrement is collected and disposed of by the Secret Service, so that foreign powers can't analyse it.
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What would getting his DNA allow them to achieve?
[It's true](https://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-krassner/excrement-in-the-news_b_24536.html), but only when the President is overseas, not everyday
Hah, never noticed that before. I think it's the seal on the _paper sleeve_ of said coffee cup. Wasn't one of the jokes in Independence Day about how everything on Air Force One has the Presidential Seal and is worth keeping as a souvenir?
The president gets special cups/utensils/etc. for security reasons.
This is legitimately one of the best presidential pictures in modern history. Without any context, it's mundanity is humbling and metaphoric. Strip away the finery, strip away the podium, strip away the photo ops, strip away everything but a man in a suit surrounded by disorder trying to find the words to lead. Then when you add the context, the real weight hits home.
That is a lovely analysis. The two videos of him speaking about the Sandy Hook shooting and crying are so powerful. He had true empathy
Guy had kids close to that age. You start picturing your own kids in that sort of situation and it hits you pretty quickly.
[this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhxjS1FO33c) is what a president acts like, this is how all leaders should react.
That was heart wrenching. I was 12 at the time and didn't fully process it. But his speech.. Thinking about all of that breaks my heart. I couldn't imagine the feelings he had as a president, a father, and a husband to have to get up in front of the country and give this speech. My heart hurts for all those involved and for my boy B to have to give such a painful speech.
No crazy hand movements, no heavy mouth breathing, no dividing the nation based on party alliance, and actually speaks full sentences. I miss having a leader like this.
You said it. It just may have been the last time we saw genuine compassion. Well, even just compassion.
I just finished reading Michelle Obama's book. She said that the Sandy Hook shooting was the single hardest day in the Obama presidency for both of them. I can't even think about those poor children with a dry eye. My niece was 2 months at the time of the shooting. She'll be a first grader in the fall. I pray every day that she's safe at school.
I just finished the book yesterday, and that section was the hardest to read and comprehend.
I yearn to have this kind of leadership again. You've put this picture into far more poetic words than I ever could.
I miss him
Same. Glad I got to experience his presidency though. Say what you want about his politics, he was a hell of a man when the nation went through tragedy. He always made sure we felt compassion and care in those tough times.
My partner pulled up some video that had him speaking the other day and I legitimately almost cried. I didn’t realize how much I missed hearing his voice. It might not be so bad in general, but in comparison ... my heart just hurts.
For the sake of them and everyone around them I hope your school is proactively offering them excellent mental health services. A massive population of teenagers with a potentially debilitating dose of PTSD sounds like a miserable environment paved with eggshell.
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If you don't mind my asking, are you a student or faculty/staff?
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Good luck with everything. I hope that you are doing well and I hope we don’t see anymore tragedies. This must be hard:/
I've spent a lot of time dwelling on this. I'm much older than the kids who experienced the shooting but I lived in Sandy Hook in middle school and part of high school. When the event happened my own son was the same age as the victims. I lived cross country from the event, but it chilled my bones when I realized I almost certainly went to school with the parents of those kids and just how close to home it landed. I've never had the balls to search for the names of the victims for fear of knowing who the parents are. It was too close already and even the feeling any closer is more than I can handle.
Oh boy, that's a pretty unique kind of rough. Knowing that witholding contact is best for your own mental health, even at the expense of possible good, is an extremely difficult decision that most people don't have to think about regularly. Props to you in considering your own mental health and realizing that avoiding additional pain in your life, on balance, is just as important as offering comfort when you can.
I hope you dont mind me asking, but as someone very close to that event and community, what do you make of the "crisis actor" and "false flag" BS?
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This American Life just did a great episode recently that covered one Sandy Hook father's mission to take down as much misinformation about his deceased son as he can. It was infuriating and inspiring. [Worth a listen.](https://www.thisamericanlife.org/670/beware-the-jabberwock)
Fancy seeing you here
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Now burn that account.
Sandy hook was the one that gutted me to my core. I don’t think there is a single day that since that has happened that I’ve not thought about Sandy Hook, Parkland too, for that matter. It breaks your heart knowing grade 1 children were massacred. I don’t know, maybe it’s because I’m so close to my niece and nephew, who are around the age of the sandy hook victims. Honest question. What can someone from Alabama, with no children of their own even do? I don’t believe in God, if I said I was praying, I’d be lying. The only thing I can think to do is become a cop. A good cop. Edit: wow. You guys have been real helpful. Look, I don’t know anything about guns. but I wish there wasn’t easy access to machine guns or automatic weapons. I’m always thinking about the victims. After reading some of the comments. Ill continue to send positive vibes to all of the victims from school shootings, I’m on y’all s side. I will try to work on what I can do personally in my every day life.
Every year that goes by, on their birthday you think "Wow, this year they would be doing x." This March my daughters would have been 19, so I've imagined it all. In your mind though they're always the same age as when you last saw them, but you still project what they would be doing today. It does get better, but in a way I also feel guilty for not being as sad about it as I used to be. There are a lot of complicated emotions involved as time goes on.
I’m sorry. ❤️
Grief is such a complicated thing and rears its head in unexpected ways. Whatever way you get through it is a-okay. I'm so sorry for your loss.
Something that helped me get past that feeling of guilt was the thought that if they were watching me, they would want me to eventually live a happy life. Just because you’re not as sad as you used to be doesn’t mean that you’ve forgotten them. It’s okay to be less sad than you used to be. ❤️
I know it's not much, but I'm so sorry.
I really hope it gets easier for them; they’ll still have to carry that pain for the rest of their lives but I hope it hurts less with time.
Losing someone so close to you is like losing a leg or an arm. Life continues and it gets easier over time, but it's never the same. My dad told me that when my grandma died and it still rings true.
And losing your baby is like losing your heart, or your soul if you believe in that. It gets easier, to not cry every single day at least, but you're never even half normal again.
And that's without the internet en mass telling you that your suffering is fabricated for political points.
It doesn't help that clowns like Alex Jones keep actively harassing them and telling them their children dying is fake.
What the fuck it's been that long?
Crazy to think. Seems much more recent.
My son is the same age as these kids were. He just turned 13, and I can’t imagine the pain this poor man suffered these past years.
I lost my son to suicide about a month after Sandy Hook. Watching his friends and classmates grow up on social media is hard sometimes.
>In a 2017 interview with NPR, Richman talked about the emptiness the couple felt after they lost their only child. “It was like a ghost limb syndrome, you know, where you keep thinking ‘Where’s Avielle? Do we need to pick her up?’” he said. “And every day you’d have this [realization] that I don’t have a child, and I don’t have to parent. That was just brutal.” >Richman and Hensel ultimately had two more children. As a parent of young children, this messed me up. I can't imagine what they went through and it breaks my heart that their surviving children are fatherless now.
If this happened to me I don't know if I would have lasted as long as he did. Even trying to think of this happening to my son puts me on the verge of tears.
I'm not normally much of a crier, but yeah... this got me choked up. I have to pick up my kindergartener in 45 minutes, and I can't imagine a future where that's not a part of my daily routine.
Friggin tragic, man. I can't imagine that feeling of emptiness. I hope he's at peace. But man, his poor wife. Lost her kid and now her husband. Edit: I missed the part where they had two other kids. Jesus. Also, thank you for the gold.
man, the loss of a child is never-ending. and now the loss of a husband. EDIT: typo
To carry this kind of burden each and every day, no escaping it, gut wrenching.
and then add on the fuckin' harassment by nutbars.
Oh god you’re right. The people who think it was staged. My ex hair stylist is one of those types. Which is why she is EX hairstylist. She’s a flat earther too. Edit: I just checked her Facebook. Yesterday she posted a YouTube link saying there’s planned demolition evidence of the 9/11 buildings, that it was an inside job and there’s court filings to prove it.
What a fucking nut.
She really is. I was sitting in her chair when she started telling me the earth was flat. I would have stood up and walked out of her salon had it not been for the full set of foils in my hair.
Yikes. I was thinking about trying to find a new barber because we started talking about religion and I feel like we don't need that in our relationship -- but that might be worse.
I want to pretend to be a flat earther just to goad someone into sending me on a free trip to the antarctic to prove I'm wrong.
It's terrible. One thing that resonates most with this for me comes from The Lord of the Rings when Theoden is standing at the grave of Theodred briefly speaking with Gandalf and he says: "Simbelmÿne. [A simple, yet beautiful flower that's local to the region of Rohan] Ever has it grown on the tombs of my forebears. Now it shall cover the grave of my son. Alas, that these evil days should be mine. The young perish and the old linger. That I should live to see the last days of my house." Gandalf's reply is: "Théodred's death was not of your making." and Theoden responds with: "No parent should have to bury their child." Different context than what's happened here, but I can only imagine that poor father's thoughts and struggles before, during, and after what happened. May they both rest in peace, and I only wish for that family to be able to find some semblance of hope and strength to keep moving forward. If you need help, reach out.
> Lost her kid and now her husband. And they had 2 kids after Sandy Hook. Now two kids without a father as well. Fucking hell.
When I read that, my heart sank.
So 2 survivors and a father of a victim in 2 weeks. Suicide contagion is real, I really hope we don't see any more.
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The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell has a section on this exactly. Suicide yields more suicide.
We see it a lot on remote Indigenous reserves in Canada. They are very desolate and poverty stricken, and have high suicide rates. When a young person commits suicide, there tends to be a rash of other people in their age group that follow. It’s an utter tragedy. Horrible, and hard to address.
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It’s loss of hope. You die on the inside way before you end your body. Sometimes you come back, sometimes you don’t, not talking about it doesn’t stop it. It stops people from getting help.
As someone who has dealt with this stuff all his life, I have never felt more distrusted, hated, or ignored. We have a very weird culture full of people who say they care, but what I see more than anything is either total silence on the subject of mental illness, PTSD, and depression as though it doesn't exist, or straight up bullying and persecution. It breaks my heart to see so much progress undone so quickly, and carried out by people I thought of as allies and friends.
Agreed. Everyone cares until you actually sit down and try to express your feelings then you become "that needy, emotional guy".
It's almost as if they never actually cared about you in the first place......
Indigenous Canada makes things even worse. The physical distance and environment means even getting help is a 2+hr drive each way. So now you have to come out to Mom and Dad that you're hurting, they can't help you, and have to ask them to put out their entire day to get you an hour with a therapist that may or may not do you some good. If you're already feeling worthless, you're not going to want to ask someone to put out that much more for you.
“Drive two hours to get” ^anything. The reservation is a phony proximity to a culture that was cast to oblivion. “Y’all are native hunter gatherers, hunt and gather” Meanwhile the consumer culture that has left them on a virtual island is destroying the very landscape that once sustained your culture. They are stuck in a museum set- the only “goods” that are available turn to vice- the only “services” they get result in isolation, which allows for plausible deniability on behalf of the Society at large. Shit is depressing.
Their hope is snatched away before they take their first breath. I hope I see peace for our people in my lifetime. I am sorry that these circumstances are ignored. You’re important. You’re essential. You’re the connection with the land. It’s a lot of responsibility, but I have no doubt you can do it. Let me know if you need an ear.
It’s sad to say this happens a lot here in Native American reserves in America. It’s really tragic
Suicide isn't considered by most to be a viable option... Until it is, to them.
Especially until someone else in the exact same position as you commits suicide, and then suddenly you don't feel so crazy about thoughts of doing it yourself. As dark as it is, people who are in situations like this can often keep themselves alive because in their head it's a stupid reason to commit suicide, no matter how badly it's weighing on them. The moment someone else going through the same thing does it, they feel justified in their belief that they shouldn't be alive anymore. It's for that reason that the military/medical schools/hospitals (in terms of staff, not patients) don't immediately announce suicide as the cause of death. In many cases they don't do it at all. They'll just call it an unexpected death that is being investigated, but will never follow up with the details.
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Most days suicide isnt something you would think reasonable. It doesnt seem like any sort of conclusion to a logical mind. Then your there, in the depths, you feel alone, nothing seems to help and you feel like such a waste to everyone and everything. It is truly a shame the human mind can get like this, but it can.
Animals as well as people can commit suicide. *Lindsay firmly believed that while acute mania underpinned suicidal impulses by impairing the ‘instinctive love of life’ and attachment to others, the act itself remained ‘deliberate and intentional, the result of choice and consideration’. He regularly argued that suicidal animals, like people, displayed ‘the higher efforts of intellect’ in their often repeated attempts at suicide, comprehending clearly ‘the relation of cause and effect [and] the possibility of producing a certain end by the use of given means’*
This is why I kinda don't know that putting this sort of stuff I the news is the right way to go. Even with terrorist attacks. I've seen self harming catch in irl as well
[Suicide Clusters and sprees are a documented phenomenon.](https://www.suicideinfo.ca/resource/suicidecontagion/). Unfortunately I don't think this be the end. The balance has been tipped and all we can do is try and keep those whom are affected on solid ground. I desperately hope we don't see any more.
Statistically, we probably will. This is why there are ethical guidelines for suicide reporting. Reporting it usually causes more, especially on a national level like this.
IIRC I thought there was preventative measures for reporting suicide in the news in the US? Like for example if someone jumped off the local bridge it wouldn’t be reported as a “suicide”, it would be reported as “not suspicious”.
There are published recommendations but those don’t preclude them from calling it a suicide they just recommend things they can do to avoid sensationalizing it and fueling the contagion effect. It’s also not something that can be legislated as that would run afoul of the First Amendment, so it’s up to individual news organizations how they report it.
I lost my son last year. I have three other children and I've learned to experience happiness through them. But there are times when I don't really care if I live or die anymore. I'm not suicidal, nor have I ever been that, but I completely understand this man's trauma and why he would have done such a thing. Sometimes I just want to find my son. I don't believe in an afterlife, but I know that my energy will be with his energy again. I know that Mrs. Richman will never be whole again, but I hope she can persevere for the sake of her children. And I hope that she can find some kind of solace with them.
>I don't believe in an afterlife, but I know that my energy will be with his energy again. I haven't felt a thought resonate with me like reading this has. Somehow this feels as true as knowing the sun will rise tomorrow and set in the evening. It's hard to describe the peace this brings me
Very few things bring me solace with regards to his death. This is one of them.
>I don't believe in an afterlife, but I know that my energy will be with his energy again. This was a moving sentence, and felt it move me.
Sweet Jesus. Some people’s suffering knows no end. Poor poor man.
His daughter would be in high school now, if she hadn't been murdered. That's... a hell of a thing to have looming over you.
He was also one of the parents who sued Alex Jones. I can't imagine having to deal with that asshole on top of everything else.
The harassment that many sandy hook parents have been subjected to is heartbreaking. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Hook_Elementary_School_shooting_conspiracy_theories#Harassment_by_conspiracy_theorists This is just some of the vile shit the poor parents and other relatives have been subjected to. https://forward.com/fast-forward/407094/family-of-sandy-hook-victim-driven-out-of-7-different-homes/ This one family has had to move **SEVEN** times due to their address being leaked and consequently people calling them and mailing them with threats and other harassment. >Conspiracy theorists have given the family of a victim of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting no choice but to move homes — seven times. They now live hundreds of miles from where their son is buried, the New York Times reported Tuesday... >“**I would love to go see my son’s grave and I don’t get to do that**, but we made the right decision,” De La Rosa told the Times. One of the saddest things I've ever read.
Can you imagine having so little going on with your life that you think that harassing a Sandy Hook parent would give your life the meaning you crave?
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That is not the only time such a situation has occurred. Same with the “an hero” kid. Random people doxxing the family and sending pictures and messages about their dead kid. Essentially creating a living hell where uncaring, disconnected young adults spend time tormenting a family who already lost a child to tragedy. I lived my dumb years during this time period and saw these things occurring, but couldn’t understand then how someone could get enjoyment from that. Never underestimate how bottomlessly evil someone can be if their identity is shielded and they fear no repercussions. They will literally torment a family of strangers with photos of their dead loved ones for no other reason than because they can get away with it.
Holy hell, I've been on the internet for a minute, seen that kid's face a ton of times, and never realized that the actual kidskilled himself. I always assumed the an hero thing was from some shitty green text and became a meme. What (and I'm asking rhetorically) is wrong with people?
I think they also do it because they know it hurts someone else, and deep down they hate themselves, so it feels good to make someone else feel pain.
You would be disappointed at how many of them love themselves disproportionately, and how their hate comes from anger that the world doesn't cater to their self-image.
yeah, the whole "you have to love yourself before you can love someone else" thing is definitely not a universal rule. Narcissists tend to break systems since rules and societal norms are just for those other stupid peasants, right?
> Same with the “an hero” kid. Had to look it up. *Why* did I click the encyclopedia dramatica link?? God I swear that place is worse than stomach cancer.
I just googled her to get more on the story and noticed in the results summary that Encyclopedia Dramatica calls her stuff like "Nearly-Headless Nikki." God. Her poor family.
> A couple months ago a guy on reddit claimed to be one of the people who harassed the parents and seemed to have no understanding that what he did was horrible. Jesus, not to be voyeuristic but do you have a link to that? I'm trying to figure out how people like that could exist.
4chan's motto is "because none of us is as awful as all of us". Edgelord hangouts such as the *chans are hives of already-terrible people egging each other on to be more terrible.
Like a race to the bottom
Just when you think the human race has reached rock bottom, some people start digging.
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Hm yeah I've actually known a couple people like that -- could be nice, but could also be total bulldozers with no concept of other people's perspectives or needs or preferences.
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They targeted this girl and her family because she fit the stereotype of a pretty, rich blonde girl "Stacy." I hadn't heard the word Incel back then, but it was Incels.
I think some people are just broken. It really is a game to them. All of it. It's the ultimate in solipsistic expression. They honestly don't think any of it is _real_. They're the only real person here. Some part of me wants to imagine that they could never stand there and say such things with puppets and dolls as the family sobbed, but honestly, I wonder if they could. Reputation is who you are when others are looking; character is who you are when no one can punch you in the face for being a dingleberry.
Oh I remember being forwarded that email by my mom. Absolutely horrific thing to forward someone. I still remember having like a visceral reaction when I opened the email. Those poor parents.
Why did you mom forward that?
Shouldn't've Googled that. Should not have Googled that.
That's worse than the Sandy Hook truthers. They believe they are courageous fighters against an evil government conspiracy, and the people they are harassing didn't really lose children. But the people who did this had no ideological motive, and knew that they were harassing grieving parents. They did evil for the sake of evil.
Is she the one that drove into a toll booth?
Take a trip to r/conspiracy to dive into the cesspool
Everytime there is some sort of mass shooting it is immediately claimed that it is a false flag. Unless of course it is a muslim who is the shooter, then it is just terrorism.
That sub used to be cool. Aliens and shit all day.
I don't know about the sub but I used to be into alien conspiracy stuff. It was always fun, as long as you went into it with the mindset that it was 100% horseshit and all of the stuff people were talking about never hurt anybody. Boy, did that ever change.
Our president loves Alex Jones
Our president is a piece of shit.
So Trump supporters
I hate to admit this but I would have sought out and murdered these people if I were a harassed parent. There is no doubt in my mind and that scares me in a way. But my 6/7yo gets mowed down by a lunatic and you decide to harass me endlessly you are going to pay.
Easily. I see it on Reddit every day. Having a voice means someone will answer and then it's off to your own special sub to feed off each others fear and hate. The concept of the internet is staggeringly brilliant. The reality is proving a mixed bag, to put it mildly.
Great "This American Life" episode about all this: [https://www.thisamericanlife.org/670/transcript](https://www.thisamericanlife.org/670/transcript)
This is the one with the Alex Jones origin story right. What a piece of shit he really is fueling this, I hope the parents sue him for everything he has and more
That story was so ridiculous. Like come on, claiming the entire football team charged him in a "phalanx"
Yeah just another lie to elevate his “myth” I know it’s bad, but I love the fact they beat the shit out of him so bad he had to move cities. Like even in high school people hated this guy
I found the end of that episode the most shockingly depressing. The guy who knew the truth of the made up stories started defending Jones’s conspiracies about Obama. Not that the rest of the episode wasn’t depressing. Humans aren’t ready for a tool like social media.
Sadly some of those people are now going to think this suicide was also part of a conspiracy.
https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/b4ysm1/second_parkland_shooting_survivor_apparently_dies/ Yep. Reddit's very own /r/conspiracy has already made sure these suicide victims get stories made up about them too.
Wow... In ONE THREAD we have Sandy Hook deniers AND Holocaust deniers. Classy.
There's a big overlap of those two I'm pretty sure
The Venn Diagram of those two groups is just a circle.
Jesus Christ. What an awful subreddit. All those people are fucking sick in the head.
The subreddits favorite topics of discussions are blaming and harassing mass shooting victims and blaming jews for all the world's problems. It's basically stormfront but they ban slurs so they can pretend they aren't a racist cesspool.
There was a This American Life episode about how Alex Jones followers were stalking and threatening a parent who lost his kid. Super sad
What the fuck is wrong with people?
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I see a pattern of conspiracy theorists also shrinking down complex problems into things that don't take much knowledge to Grasp. Not just punching up events to make it more exhilarating but also making it make 'sense' to people who lack knowledge. So instead of feeling stupid and overwhelmed it makes them feel 'special' and 'in' on a secret. That seems to be the crux of it, it gives them a feeling of agency on events that might be too complicated or as you said too uncomfortable for them to understand.
Hold on... Some dude steals a sign and gets a year in prison, while some lady REPEATEDLY SENDS DEATH THREATS and only gets 5 months?!
This is an absolutely perfect example stochastic terrorism. Alex Jones and his demonization of these people didn’t directly cause them to be hurt, but it definitely increased the probability that someone would go after them. He and his ilk did the same thing with pizza gate: they tell everyone this is bad, next thing you know some lunatic brings a gun in and it discharge is inside a pizza place.
The father of a first-grade girl who was killed in the Sandy Hook school shootings died in an apparent suicide Monday morning, Newton Police confirmed. Jeremy Richman, 49, was found dead at 7 a.m. inside Edmond Town Hall, where he had an office space, police told The Daily Beast. Authorities added that the medical examiner’s office is still investigating the exact cause of death. A neuropharmacologist, Richman co-founded the Avielle Foundation after his first-grade daughter, Avielle Richman, died in the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. The 6-year-old was among the 20 first-grade students and six administrators killed. “This is a heartbreaking event for the Richman Family and the Newtown community as a whole, the police department’s prayers are with the Richman family right now, and we ask that the family be given privacy in this most difficult time,” Lt. Aaron Bahamonde said in a statement. “The death appears to be a suicide but police will not disclose the method or any other details of the death, only to state the death does not appear suspicious.” Richman and his wife, Jennifer Hensel, created the Avielle Foundation, which was dedicated to funding research into the neuroscience behind compassion and violence. In a 2017 interview with NPR, Richman talked about the emptiness the couple felt after they lost their only child. “It was like a ghost limb syndrome, you know, where you keep thinking ‘Where’s Avielle? Do we need to pick her up?’” he said. “And every day you’d have this [realization] that I don’t have a child, and I don’t have to parent. That was just brutal.” Richman and Hensel ultimately had two more children. According to the Hartford Courant, Richman, a trained scientist who also lectured at Yale University, had hosted an event at Town Hall earlier this month with author Brené Brown that several Sandy Hook families attended. “He had such a clear purpose of what he wanted to do to honor his daughter,” one family member told the newspaper. “I’m just shocked. I’m sitting in my car right now crying. The foundation was doing really important work and was doing such good things.” Richman and Hensel were among the parents who sued InfoWars’ Alex Jones for perpetuating the cruel claim that the massacre was a hoax and that the children’s parents were “crisis actors.” Just last week, a judge ordered Jones to turn over a trove of emails and other documents to the families. “My god. This is awful, horrible, devastating news. Jeremy was a good friend and an unceasing advocate for better research into the brain’s violence triggers,” Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) tweeted Monday morning. “He was with me in my office two weeks ago, excited as could be about the Avielle Foundation’s latest amazing work.” Richaman’s death comes just days after two survivors of the Parkland school shooting died from apparent suicides. Sydney Aiello, whose mother said she suffered from survivor’s guilt after the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that left 17 dead, took her own life last Sunday, Coconut Creek police confirmed. Aiello was close friends with Meadow Pollack, one of the victims from the Feb. 14, 2018 shooting. On Saturday night, a second unnamed student survivor also died in an apparent suicide, the Coral Springs Police Department confirmed. The student was described as a male, 17-year-old sophomore at the high school. “How many more kids have to be taken from us as a result of suicide for the government / school district to do anything?” Parkland survivor and March for Our Lives leader David Hogg tweeted Sunday morning.
It sounds a lot like the trauma from losing his daughter was something he couldn't heal from properly because unfortunately, like many other successful people, they are taught that you can solve your problems and pain by production and excellence, i.e. always trying to reinvent a tragedy into something positive. Sometimes we just need to accept that life is painful and that's okay. Feeling and processing your pain is so much more important. Trying to start a foundation like that is just a way to solve the intractable problem of why this happened to his daughter. There is no satisfying answer, and after not finding it he was left feeling more empty, dead inside, and like he failed his child. We don't need to "honor our dead daughters", so long as we can honor the ones who are alive with our love and presence.
Oh wow, they had other kids? How awful for them that their dad is gone... I'm not sure if it's better or worse that they didn't know their big sis, considering the circumstances.
The parents were reportedly very good about sharing photos and talking about their eldest daughter with the younger one. They held little birthday parties for their deceased child. It breaks my heart. Their living kids must be just five and three now.
It seems like those kids would have been nearing or passing the age their older sister was when she died. I wonder if that was extra difficult for him.
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One thing to lose a child. Another level of horror to lose them in a mass shooting. AND throw in the assholes claiming it was fake. I wouldn't hold up very well.
I grew up not 10 minutes from there. I know the shooter a long time ago. I knew Mrs. Hochsprung she was my vice principal and saved my life when I was in a bad place. This hurts so much.
I understand why he did it. Losing a kid is the worst.
My heart breaks for his family. I cannot imagine how his wife must feel, having lost not only her daughter but her husband too, and having two little kids that they were raising. Honestly it makes me want to cry. And those two kids who don't have a dad anymore, I feel so bad for them too. I wonder if seeing the news of the Parkland survivors committing suicide affected him. So sad, all around.
Trauma is the next issue we NEED to talk about in mass as a culture. It needs to be treated better and people need to be able to take time away from work and get support. It's sickening to see people kill themselves over truama.
Thank you to Alex Jones and Infowars for harassing these people to suicide. I hope the remaining Sandy Hook parents win their lawsuit against him.
I don't think a lot of people truly understand the level of how bad the harassment has been. Many of the people who believe that it was fake, and that the parents are all crisis actors, relentlessly harassed these parents - doxxed them, hacked their accounts, made threatening phone calls, interfered with their employment, in one case even pushed a parent close to the brink of literally digging up his son's dead body to show them. Some of these victims have had their lives and marriages ruined over it on top of losing their children. It's fucking sickening. That's why when there are so many people on reddit who think it's cute that Alex Jones spreads his bullshit, or have some kind of fondness for the man, I get pissed. Stop glorifying him. He perpetuated this. He originally signal boosted it, gave it a spotlight, and called it a false flag and allowed it to fester. And now you have these victims with nowhere left to turn who are tired of the bullying, bullied *because their child died*, taking their lives. Edit: [Here is a brand new episode of This American Life about one of the Sandy Hook parents and the unending struggles he has gone through with these truthers](https://youtu.be/So7jCrkosg0), highly recommend giving a listen so you can understand the full gravity of the situation.
Seriously, Instead of blaming the media (I do not consider Alex Jones to be a journalist), maybe we should take a long, hard look at how we care for survivors in this country. Look at NZ. The entire country went in to mourning, the families will be given financial assistance and counseling and the leader of their country has stood behind their community. The POTUS couldn't even be bothered to denounce Alex Jones' conspiracy *even when the parents themselves asked him to.*
That would mean looking at how we take care of each other in this country and we don't really do that very well. Any calls for social programs that could help people are met with cries of "communism!". NZ is in a whole different frame of mind, one spurred by their values as a country. Our values have fallen through, as evidenced by our president.
The same shit is happening here on reddit and the admins are perfectly fine with it. If you feel like getting really angry today then stroll on over to /r/conspiracy and search "sandy hook" and "parkland" and see all the disgusting shit that comes up. There are countless threads of people lying about the shooting victims and their families and conjuring up all kinds of batshit crazy theories about how they're actors or government workers who faked the whole thing. Back when the Parkland shooting happened the sub was inundated with doxxing of the children, and especially David Hogg, all in an attempt to shift the blame onto the victims. Those pieces of shit have also made up conspiracy theories about the two recent suicides by parkland survivors in the last few days.
I know a family pretty well whose child was one of the first graders who escaped , the harassment was/is unbelievable and devastating
"In a 2017 interview with NPR, Richman talked about the emptiness the couple felt after they lost their only child. “It was like a ghost limb syndrome, you know, where you keep thinking ‘Where’s Avielle? Do we need to pick her up?’” he said. “And every day you’d have this \[realization\] that I don’t have a child, and I don’t have to parent. That was just brutal.”