Sandy Hook survivors thank those who ‘stood up for us when we couldn’t’
“Having other people around me who are brave enough to share their stories has helped me be able to tell my own.” Rayna Toth, 16, a Newtown High School senior, and one of five girls who share their stories in a social media video posted by the Newtown Action Alliance
NEWTOWN — Five high school girls with indelible experiences of the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting share one voice of gratitude for the gun-reform activists who “stood up for us when we couldn’t stand up for ourselves” in a video posted by a homegrown nonprofit.
“Having other people around me who are brave enough to share their stories has helped me be able to tell my own,” said Rayna Toth, 16, a Newtown High School senior, and one of five girls who share their stories in a social media video posted by the Newtown Action Alliance. “I am forever grateful for those who gave me a voice when I was too young and too afraid to use mine.”
The videoed testimonies provide a rare window into how teenagers who survived the worst crime in modern Connecticut history are living with their pain. Their stories may answer, in part, one of the biggest unknowns: what the lasting effect on these kids would be.
“I was 8 years old and sitting in my third-grade classroom when a man
walked in with a gun and stole the lives of 26 people of Sandy Hook Elementary School — six educators and 20 children,” said Camille Paradis, a board member of the Junior Newtown Action Alliance at Newtown High School, in her portion of the social media video.
“That gun stole my childhood as well as the lives of those people, and it changed the course of my life and my community forever. I now live with that trauma and that PTSD from the event, and I am now part of the movement to end gun violence and to ensure that guns are kept out of the hands of dangerous people and they’re kept out of vulnerable communities.”
In contrast to other communities where mass school shootings have mobilized students, such as the March for Our Lives movement that was born out the 2018 massacre of 17 students and staff at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., the youth of Newtown didn’t begin speaking out until a few years ago, when they were old enough to take on leadership positions in the Junior Newtown Action Alliance.
“I was in third grade at the time, and I lost my best friend, Daniel, who was in first grade and who was 7 years old. Obviously along with his family and other victims and other survivors in the community, I felt the pain. It was devastating not being able to see him again, but I don’t think I exactly understood what was going on,” says Maggie LaBanca, co-chair of the Junior Newtown Action Alliance, in her segment of the social media video.
“It took a while for me to join an activism club like this and to try to speak out and fight for change because there’s 26 people now who can’t,” LaBanca continues in the video, which was recorded on the ninth anniversary of the Sandy Hook shooting in mid-December.
“I would like to thank all the adults and all the supporters we have had over the years who have spoken for us when we were children, and we couldn’t.”
Fellow Junior Newtown Action Alliance member Naiya Amin said in her segment of the video that “I got involved in this movement because I have seen and continue to see the effects that (the shooting) has had on the community.”
“I’m grateful for everyone who stood up for us when we couldn’t stand up for ourselves,” said Amin, a senior at Newtown High School. “I’m grateful for everyone who continues to stand up for us and stand with us and uplift the voices of the young survivors of gun violence as well as share their own experiences.”
Fellow high school senior Madeline Richard agreed, saying she joined the gun-violence prevention movement after becoming friends with some of the survivors and “they told me their stories and their experiences.”
“[A]longside them I became more educated on gun control and the importance of it — especially bills in Congress that could have prevented it,” Richard said. “That’s what started my path on becoming more compassionate on gun control legislation and comprehensive gun reform.”