Leonard Pozner

Leonard Pozner is the father of a Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victim, Noah Pozner.

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.

On December 14, 2012, 20 year old Adam Lanza took a Bushmaster XM-15 semi-automatic 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.

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 were actually crisis actors.

Among them was radio-show host Alex Jones, who repeatedly used the conspiracy theory to tell 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 citizens' right to bear arms.

While mourning the loss of their children, Pozner and the other victims' families had to endure accusations that their children were not dead, and that the tragedy was a fraud designed to undermine Americans' gun rights.

They received death threats and in-person, online and phone call harassment from people 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 well as posts and videos using photos (often defaced) of his son.

"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."

After Pozner succeeded in getting Infowars videos 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 Haller, 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.

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.

The HONR network is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization founded by Pozner in response to the harassment and hate that he and other families of victims of mass casualty events endured online.

After his son died in the Sandy Hook shooting, and he and his family became the target of online abuse, volunteers reached out offering to help flag and report the hateful content.

As additional mass casualty events occurred and the survivors and families of other victims reached out for assistance, Pozner decided to turn the loosely knit group into an organized non-profit.

The initial goal of the organization was to combat online hate and harassment, particularly when directed at survivors and the families of victims of violent tragedies and mass casualty events.

More recently the organization mission has expanded to provide guidance for all people affected by harassment, bullying and abuse.

The HONR Network now has around 300 volunteers who help monitor and remove harassing content online.

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 Richards' actions towards 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.

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 by The Guardian website.

In the letter they appealed for help from the Facebook CEO, urging him to honor 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."

Facebook has since taken steps to recognize these victims and Pozner now works with its content moderators and policymakers.

In a statement, a Facebook spokesperson told CBS News: "Following Sandy Hook, Lenny was one of the people who sent us questions and concerns. In the wake of unthinkably tragic experience, his feedback helped effect change in our policies on bullying and harassment."

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.

Blog hosting platform WordPress.com initially refused to help.

Its parent company Automattic repeatedly responded to 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.

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 situations.

Automattic then added a new policy that prohibits blogs from the "malicious publication of unauthorized, identifying images of minors".