Leonard Pozner is the father of a Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victim, Noah Pozner. He is the founder of the HONR Network, which helps the victims of mass casualty violence in addition to the targets of on-line hate speech and harassment.

Sandy Hook Elementary School capturing

On December 14, 2012, 20 yr outdated Adam Lanza took a Bushmaster XM-15 semi-automatic rifle into Sandy Hook Elementary college and killed 20 youngsters and 6 teachers. One of the kids killed was Pozner’s six-year-old son Noah. Shortly afterwards, conspiracy theorists used Facebook, YouTube, blogs and other social media platforms to claim the massacre was a hoax and a false flag operation and that the victims have been really crisis actors. Among them was radio-show host Alex Jones, who repeatedly used the conspiracy theory to inform the audience listening to his InfoWars radio program to stand up and “find out the reality”, insisting that the shooting was staged by the federal authorities to destroy the Second Amendment and residents’ proper to bear arms.

While mourning the loss of their kids, Pozner and the other victims’ households needed to endure accusations that their youngsters weren’t lifeless, and that the tragedy was a fraud designed to undermine Americans’ gun rights. They received demise threats and in-person, on-line and telephone name harassment from people who took up the decision from Jones and others. In response, Pozner began reporting harassing and defaming content material and claims about him and his family, in addition to posts and videos using photographs (often defaced) of his son. “I even have to completely defend the memory of my son — I really have no selection” he stated. “I know the way a few of these theories construct up. They don’t fade away and the more time they spend on-line, the extra accepted they become. The JFK conspiracy theory in the US could be very accepted. Conspiracy theories erase history, they erase our recollections, and the way will this event (Sandy Hook) be remembered 100 years from now? So I assume it is important, the work that I’m doing now.”

After Pozner succeeded in getting Infowars movies removed from YouTube, Jones confirmed his audience Pozner’s personal information and maps to addresses related together with his family. In an effort to guard themselves from the continuing harassment, Pozner and Noah’s mother Veronique De La Rosa Haller, and their two surviving children, moved from Connecticut. The harassment has continued nevertheless, as every time they transfer, conspiracy theorists who stalk the household publish their new handle. The household has had to move a number of instances since leaving Connecticut. They currently stay in hiding in a high-security group lots of of miles from where their six-year-old son Noah is buried.

Sandy Hook Parent

HONR Network

The HONR community is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit group based by Pozner in response to the harassment and hate that he and different households of victims of mass casualty events endured online. After his son died within the Sandy Hook taking pictures, and he and his household became the goal of on-line abuse, volunteers reached out providing to help flag and report the hateful content material. As extra mass casualty events occurred and the survivors and families of different victims reached out for help, Pozner decided to show the loosely knit group into an organized non-profit.

The preliminary objective of the group was to combat on-line hate and harassment, particularly when directed at survivors and the families of victims of violent tragedies and mass casualty occasions. More recently the organization mission has expanded to offer steerage for all people affected by harassment, bullying and abuse. The HONR Network now has around 300 volunteers who help monitor and remove harassing content on-line.

Lucy Richards

In 2017, Floridian Lucy Richards was sentenced to five months in prison for threatening Pozner’s life. She admitted in her responsible plea to being a half of the lively on-line neighborhood of Americans who believe that the Sandy Hook capturing was staged and that the victims and their mourning members of the family are only actors. US district decide James Cohn called Richards’ actions towards Pozner “disturbing” and condemned those who unfold false claims about the deaths of the victims. “This is reality and there’s no fiction. There are no alternative information” Cohn advised Richards at her sentencing.

Campaigns

Pozner and the HONR Network have had much success in changing coverage and eradicating harmful content from the internet. In July 2018, Pozner and De La Rosa wrote an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg which was published by The Guardian website. In the letter they appealed for help from the Facebook CEO, urging him to honor the pledge he made within the US Senate: to make Facebook a safer and extra hospitable place for social interplay. Pozner and De La Rosa suggested two ways to better protect victims from harassment: “Treat victims of mass shootings and different tragedies as a protected group, such that assaults on them are specifically towards Facebook coverage. And present affected individuals with access to Facebook employees who will take away hateful and harassing posts towards victims immediately.” Facebook has since taken steps to acknowledge these victims and Pozner now works with its content material moderators and policymakers. In a statement, a Facebook spokesperson informed CBS News: “Following Sandy Hook, Lenny was one of many people who sent us questions and considerations. In the wake of unthinkably tragic expertise, his feedback helped effect change in our insurance policies on bullying and harassment.”

Pozner has additionally had success with other on-line platforms by flagging harmful content for violations corresponding to invasions of privacy, threats and harassment, and copyright infringement. In 2018, HONR Network reported 2,568 videos to YouTube and had 1,555 eliminated.[10] Blog internet hosting platform WordPress.com initially refused to help. Its father or mother company Automattic repeatedly responded to Pozner’s requests with kind letters saying “because we believe this to be fair use of the fabric, we is not going to be removing it presently”. In addition, they warned that the company might gather damages from individuals who “knowingly materially misrepresent” copyrights. Automattic have since made direct contact with Pozner and apologised for the form letters. It stated the responses Pozner obtained have been “a predefined assertion” that is used in copyright situations. Automattic then added a new policy that prohibits blogs from the “malicious publication of unauthorized, identifying pictures of minors”. This coverage meant that photographs of child victims would be eliminated.

In May 2019, on-line activist group Avaaz organised meetings with executives from Twitter and Facebook to additional the marketing campaign towards on-line hate and misinformation. Speaking at the conferences have been journalist Jessikka Aro and teenage vaccination advocate Ethan Lindenberger. Pozner participated in the meetings remotely and spoke of the need to curb online harassment. “I am a strong proponent of the First Amendment, and free speech is a vital side of American society. However, there’s a fundamental misunderstanding of individuals’s rights and responsibilities on-line. A person can’t violate my civil rights to be freed from harassment, bullying, or to have my likeness manipulated and my family targeted with death threats and intimidation after which merely try to hide behind ‘free speech..