One of the heroes of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings last month has become the focus of conspiracy theorists claiming the massacre was a hoax.
Gene Rosen, a Newtown, Conn. resident who lives near the school and took in six terrified children who had escaped from the shooting, has been accused of being a paid actor.
"I don't know what to do," Rosen, a retired psychologist, said in an interview with Salon. "I'm getting hang-up calls, I'm getting some calls, I'm getting e-mails with, not direct threats, but accusations that I'm lying, that I'm a crisis actor, 'How much am I being paid?'"
"The quantity of the material is overwhelming," said Rosen.
"That material includes accusations that the shootings were staged as an excuse to institute gun control measures. "With talk of a second shooter, Israeli death squads, and connections to "The Dark Knight Rises," the Sandy Hook shooting has joined the ranks of other tragedies associated with conspiracy theories," writes the Christian Science Monitor.
Proponents are being called "Sandy Hook Truthers," a reference to conspiracy theorist "9/11 Truthers" who believe the U.S. government was responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, claims that have no basis in fact.
"The Web seems to be the new home of the conspiracy theory. It's where conspiracy theories live, because the Web is so good at virally spreading around these kinds of little stories," says associate professor of history Jeffrey L. Pasley, who teaches a class on conspiracy theories at the University of Missouri in Columbia.
"Naturally people start coming up with different stories that aren't about how having a house full of weapons is likely to lead to some sort of tragedy," Pasley added.
The harassment has taken its toll on Rosen, who admits he put himself in the spotlight when he spoke out after the shootings. "I wanted to speak about the bravery of the children, and it kind of helped me work through this," he said. "I guess I kind of opened myself up to this."
But the normally calm 69-year-old gets frustrated when he thinks of people who minimize or dismiss the tragedy.
"There must be some way to morally shame these people, because there were 20 dead children lying an eighth of a mile from my window all night long," Rosen said.
"And I sat there with my wife, because they couldn't take the bodies out that night so the medical examiner could come. And I thought of an expression, that this 'adds insult to injury,' but that's a stupid expression, because this is not an injury, this is an abomination."
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