Leonard Pozner is the daddy of a Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting sufferer, Noah Pozner. He is the founding father of the HONR Network, which supports the victims of mass casualty violence as nicely as the targets of on-line hate speech and harassment.

Sandy Hook Parent

Sandy Hook Elementary School capturing

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

While mourning the lack of their children, Pozner and the opposite victims’ families needed to endure accusations that their children were not lifeless, and that the tragedy was a fraud designed to undermine Americans’ gun rights. They received death threats and in-person, online and cellphone call harassment from individuals who took up the call from Jones and others. In response, Pozner began reporting harassing and defaming content and claims about him and his family, as properly as posts and videos using pictures (often defaced) of his son. “I really have to completely defend the memory of my son — I have no alternative” he said. “I know how a few of these theories construct up. They don’t fade away and the extra time they spend on-line, the more accepted they become. The JFK conspiracy principle within the US may be very accepted. Conspiracy theories erase historical past, they erase our recollections, and the way will this event (Sandy Hook) be remembered a hundred years from now? So I assume it’s essential, the work that I’m doing now.”

After Pozner succeeded in getting Infowars movies faraway from YouTube, Jones confirmed his viewers Pozner’s private info and maps to addresses related with his family. In an effort to guard themselves from the persevering with harassment, Pozner and Noah’s mother Veronique De La Rosa Haller, and their two surviving youngsters, moved from Connecticut. The harassment has continued however, as every time they move, conspiracy theorists who stalk the household publish their new tackle. The household has had to transfer several occasions since leaving Connecticut. They presently reside in hiding in a high-security neighborhood tons of of miles from the place their six-year-old son Noah is buried.

HONR Network

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

The initial objective of the organization was to fight on-line hate and harassment, notably when directed at survivors and the households of victims of violent tragedies and mass casualty events. More lately the group mission has expanded to offer guidance for all folks affected by harassment, bullying and abuse. The HONR Network now has round 300 volunteers who assist monitor and remove harassing content online.

Lucy Richards

In 2017, Floridian Lucy Richards was sentenced to five months in prison for threatening Pozner’s life. She admitted in her guilty plea to being part of the energetic online neighborhood of Americans who imagine that the Sandy Hook taking pictures was staged and that the victims and their mourning relations are only actors. US district judge James Cohn referred to as Richards’ actions towards Pozner “disturbing” and condemned those who unfold false claims concerning the deaths of the victims. “This is reality and there’s no fiction. There are no various details” Cohn informed Richards at her sentencing.

Campaigns

Pozner and the HONR Network have had much success in changing coverage and eradicating dangerous content from the web. In July 2018, Pozner and De La Rosa wrote an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg which was revealed 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 more hospitable place for social interaction. Pozner and De La Rosa instructed two ways to raised shield victims from harassment: “Treat victims of mass shootings and different tragedies as a protected group, such that attacks on them are specifically towards Facebook coverage. And provide affected people with entry to Facebook workers who will take away hateful and harassing posts in opposition to victims immediately.” Facebook has since taken steps to recognize these victims and Pozner now works with its content material moderators and policymakers. In an announcement, a Facebook spokesperson informed CBS News: “Following Sandy Hook, Lenny was one of many individuals who despatched us questions and concerns. In the wake of unthinkably tragic expertise, his feedback helped impact change in our insurance policies on bullying and harassment.”

Pozner has additionally had success with different online platforms by flagging harmful content material for violations such as invasions of privateness, 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 assist. Its mother or father company Automattic repeatedly responded to Pozner’s requests with form letters saying “because we believe this to be truthful use of the material, we will not be eradicating it right now”. 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 said the responses Pozner received were “a predefined statement” that is used in copyright conditions. Automattic then added a brand new coverage that prohibits blogs from the “malicious publication of unauthorized, identifying images of minors”. This coverage meant that photographs of child victims could be eliminated.

In May 2019, online activist group Avaaz organised meetings with executives from Twitter and Facebook to additional the campaign against on-line hate and misinformation. Speaking at the meetings were journalist Jessikka Aro and teenage vaccination advocate Ethan Lindenberger. Pozner participated within the meetings remotely and spoke of the necessity to curb on-line harassment. “I am a strong proponent of the First Amendment, and free speech is a vital facet of American society. However, there’s a elementary misunderstanding of people’s rights and duties online. A individual can not violate my civil rights to be free of harassment, bullying, or to have my likeness manipulated and my household focused with dying threats and intimidation and then simply attempt to cover behind ‘free speech..