1. Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting

2. The HONR Network

3. Lucy Richards

4. Campaigns

5. Alex Jones Defamation Case

6. See also

7. References

8. External links

Lenny Pozner is the father of a Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victim. He is the founder of the HONR Network, which supports the victims of mass casualty violence as well as the targets of online hate speech and harassment.

Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting

On Friday, December 14, 2012, 20 year old Adam Lanza took an AR-15 assault rifle into Sandy Hook Elementary school and killed 20 children and 6 teachers. One of the children killed was Pozner’s six-year-old son Noah.^[1] Shortly afterward, 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 were actually crisis actors. Prominent among these conspiracy theorists was radio-show host Alex Jones, who repeatedly told his audience on his far-right InfoWars 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 citizens’ right to bear arms.^[1] So whilst mourning the loss of their children, Pozner and the other victims’ families, had to deal with accusations that their children were not dead, and that the tragedy was all a fraud designed to undermine Americans’ gun rights. ^[2] They endured death threats and in-person, online and phone call harassment from people who took up the call from Jones and others. After Pozner succeeded in getting an Infowars video removed from YouTube, Jones showed his audience Pozner’s personal information and maps to addresses associated with his family. In an effort to protect themselves from the continuing harassment, Pozner and Noah’s mother Veronique De La Rosa, and their two surviving children, moved from Connecticut. The harassment has continued however, as each time they move, conspiracy theorists who stalk the family, publish their new address.^[3] The family has had to move several times since leaving Connecticut. They currently live in hiding in a high-security community hundreds of miles from where their six-year-old son Noah is buried.^[1][4]

The HONR Network

In 2014, two years after the Sandy hook shootings, Pozner founded a group called the HONR network. The aim of the group was to "bring awareness to hoaxer activity" and "prosecute those who wittingly and publicly defame, harass and emotionally abuse the victims of high-profile tragedies."^[7] "I have to absolutely defend the memory of my son — I have no choice," he said. "I know how some of these theories build up. They don't fade away and the more time they spend online, the more accepted they become. The JFK conspiracy theory in the US is very accepted. Conspiracy theories erase history, they erase our memories, and how will this event (Sandy Hook) be remembered a hundred years from now? So I think it’s important, the work that I’m doing now."^[5] The HONR Network now has around 300 volunteers who help monitor and remove harassing content online.^[2]

Lucy Richards

In 2017, Floridian Lucy Richards was sentenced to 5 months in prison for threatening Pozner’s life. She admitted in her guilty plea to being part of the active online community of Americans who believe that the Sandy Hook shooting was staged and that the victims and their mourning family members are only actors. US district judge James Cohn called Lucy Richards’ actions towards Leonard Pozner "disturbing" and condemned those who spread false claims about the deaths of the victims. "This is reality and there is no fiction. There are no alternative facts," Cohn told Richards, at her sentencing.^[2]

Campaigns

Pozner and the HONR Network have had much success in changing policy and removing harmful content from the internet. In July 2018, Pozner and De La Rosa wrote an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg which was published in The Guardian. In the letter they appealed for help from the Facebook CEO, urging him to honour the pledge he made in the US Senate: to make Facebook a safer and more hospitable place for social interaction. Pozner and De La Rosa suggested two ways to better protect victims from harassment: "Treat victims of mass shootings and other tragedies as a protected group, such that attacks on them are specifically against Facebook policy. And provide affected people with access to Facebook staff who will remove hateful and harassing posts against victims immediately."^[6] Facebook has since taken steps to indeed recognise these victims and Pozner now works with its content moderators and policymakers.^[12]

Pozner has also had success with other online platforms by flagging harmful content for violations such as invasions of privacy, threats and harassment, and copyright infringement. In 2018, HONR Network reported 2,568 videos to YouTube and had 1,555 removed.^[7] Blog hosting platform WordPress initially refused to help. It’s parent company Automattic repeatedly responded to Mr. Pozner’s requests with form letters saying “because we believe this to be fair use of the material, we will not be removing it at this time.” In addition, they warned that the company could collect damages from people who “knowingly materially misrepresent” copyrights.^[8] Automattic have since made direct contact with Pozner and apologised for the form letters. It said the responses Mr. Pozner received were “a predefined statement” that is used in copyright situations. Automattic then added a new policy that prohibits blogs from the “malicious publication of unauthorized, identifying images of minors.” This policy meant that images of child victims would be removed. As WordPress is used by 31.6 percent of websites on the web, and has 60% of the content management system market, this change has had a significant impact on what content may appear on the internet.^[9]

Alex Jones Defamation Case

In April of 2018, in the federal court in Austin, Texas, lawyers representing Pozner, and Neil Heslin who also lost a child at Sandy Hook, launched a defamation suit against Alex Jones.^[10] In a separate case, Marcel Fontaine launched defamation proceedings against Jones for falsely identifying him as the gunman in the Parkland, Florida school shooting. In response, Jones attempted to have the Pozner and Fontaine cases dismissed under the Texas Citizens Participation Act. This act is designed to protect citizens’ right to free speech against plaintiffs who aim to silence them through costly litigation. Jones also sought more than $100,000 in court costs from the Pozner family.^[3] In August, Judge Scott Jenkins rejected Mr. Jones' argument and his motion to dismiss the lawsuit.^[11] In the month following the launch of the defamation suits, separate actions were launched by another six families of Sandy Hook victims, and one FBI agent who was a first responder at the scene.^[12]

In February 2019, in response to this suit, Judge Barbara Bellis ruled that Jones will have to submit to a sworn deposition, in addition to turning over internal financial, business, and marketing documents related to InfoWars' operations.^[13]

See also

• Sandy Hook shooting
• Alex Jones
• Infowars

References

External links

• [https://www.honrnetwork.org HONR Network]

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