Lenny Pozner

CNN Don Lemon talks to Lenny Pozner

On the morning of December 14, 2012 Adam Lanza , 20, enters the elementary school in Sandy Hook, in Newtown in Connecticut and, before committing suicide, kills 27 people: 20 are children between 6 and 7 years.

 Americans were shocked by the tragic incident at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Are you surprised Congress has not passed any new gun control laws? If legislators can't pass laws, perhaps, we need to focus in a different direction!

 All school shooters and violent gang members have something in common. Adam Lanza, the Sandy Hook shooter, was an angry, lonely, troubled young man who was socially isolated with access to guns and violent video games. Just like other violent young men, he lacked strong male role models in his life and a neighborhood and community support system. He didn't have any spiritual guidance to help develop his coping skills in order to handle his emotions. He was a candidate for mental problems and violent behavior.

 If we are going to stop gun violence, let's start a discussion on what city leaders can do to help strengthen families.

 It is a critical need to address fear and social isolation that drives people to buy guns. When we understand the importance of involvement and neighborhood responsibility, we can restore a sense of community. Disconnected families will discover they are not alone. New neighborhood mentors and role models will emerge as neighbors build trust. Youth need people who care and offer support to help them reach their potential.

 Connected and involved neighbors can help cities save millions of dollars. Citizens would no longer feel the need to buy a gun for protection as they help youth stay out of the criminal justice system. Everyone benefits.

 WHAT ELECTED, CIVIC AND RELIGIOUS LEADERS CAN DO to create positive, citywide change!

 Civic and religious leaders can talk to local elected officials about creating a...

 Citizens' Task Force to focus on strengthening families.

GOAL: Strengthen families through neighborhood support and encourage healthy role models for youth! Citizen involvement reduces fear, anger, stress and isolation, as neighbors work together and build trust.

 HOW? Elected and religious leaders have the ability to influence citizens to take charge of their neighborhood safety, which will help strengthen families.

 WHY? In cities large and small, families experience divorce, bullying, domestic violence, child abuse, and drug and alcohol abuse. When neighbors get connected, they can help restore a stronger sense of community support.

 WHO? Encourage city leaders to appoint a volunteer citizens' or youth task force to develop a plan to help residents get connected. Depending on city population, appoint a group of 8 to 10 community "doers" to discuss local concerns and focus on a plan of action.

 RESIDENTS NEED ENCOURAGEMENT AND LEADERSHIP:

 Task Force members can take an active role in speaking to schools, civic and religious groups about the plan. For example: "Adopt-A-Block" can be implemented citywide. Encourage adults and youth to conduct a neighborhood survey. Get willing neighbors together and appoint leaders. Evaluate results and address concerns.

 Ideas to get neighbors and youth involved: 

Clean up graffiti and/or the neighborhood

Plan a potluck Block Party or social gathering

Hold an emergency Preparedness meeting

Moms organize a baby-sitting co-op

Plant a community garden

Paint house numbers on curbs (Project for teens)

Offer leadership training

 Reducing fear and building trust is a long-range approach to stopping gun violence. We can no longer afford to ignore the importance of family support and neighborhood involvement if we are going to keep citizens safe and protect our children.

 Lenny Pozner's six-year-old son Noah was one of them murdered by Adam Lanza in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. Lenny Pozner has since been consistently insulted and threatened by people who think he and his son were actors paid by the government to stage a crisis for reasons that only make sense to those whose thought processes sound like shrieking lemurs.

 Lenny Pozner and HONR Network - a volunteer network he founded have been fighting back against these harassers

If there is anything worse than losing a child, it is losing a child and having people taunt you over the loss.

That is what happened to the family of Noah Pozner, a 6-year-old with tousled brown hair and lollipop-red lips, the youngest of the 26 children and staff members gunned down in 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

In the years since the massacre that shook the country and opened new anxiety over gun violence, the family has received hate-filled calls and violent emails from people who say they know the shooting was a hoax. Photos of their son — some with pornographic and anti-Semitic content — have been distributed on websites.

These outlandish theories, which hold that the Newtown school shooting was a staged mass murder engineered by gun control advocates, have lived until now in the dark corners of the Internet.

But they have gained fresh momentum in the last several months, residents here say, at a time when conspiracy theorists across the country have attained the status of celebrities, and the nation as a whole is engaged in a contentious debate over the nature of truth.

President Donald Trump and his national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, have been open enthusiasts of Alex Jones’ Infowars, a web-based radio and video network that has relentlessly pushed the theory that Sandy Hook was staged by Democrats to advance a gun control agenda.

An unabashed Trump supporter during the campaign, Jones says he received a personal call of thanks from the president-elect days after the election.

Although Trump has not spoken publicly about Sandy Hook, many residents here say he is nurturing the culture of exaggeration and paranoia on which conspiracy theorists thrive.

“Maybe it has nothing to do with Donald Trump, but somehow these hate creeps have been less shy about their beliefs,” said Noah’s father, Lenny Pozner, an information technology specialist. “They’ve been emboldened.”

Mark Fenster, a law professor at the University of Florida and author of a book about conspiracy theories in American politics, said the Sandy Hook hoax theory was a response to a Democratic-controlled White House of a kind that often shows up in political extremist circles.

“Conspiracy theories are pervasive in American politics, and they target whoever is in power,” Fenster said. “I think it won’t be long before the Alex Joneses of this world are saying that Trump is part of some conspiracy.’’

The town of Newtown is drafting an official letter to the White House demanding that Trump sever his ties to Jones.

“Maybe it has nothing to do with Donald Trump, but somehow these hate creeps have been less shy about their beliefs. They've been emboldened.” — Lenny Pozner, Noah's father

After Adam Lanza brutally murdered 26 women and children at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, parents and relatives of the victims still relive the terror of that fateful day along with the daily anguish and torment they suffer over the loss of their loved ones. Worse, they have to suffer the onslaught of delusional conspiracy theorists, commonly called hoaxers, who claim Sandy Hook was a "false flag" event concocted by the government as a pretext to gun confiscation.

 As a parent of one of the murdered students, Noah Pozner, Lenny Pozner has worked to debunk and stop the cruel and hateful hoaxers who use the Internet to spread their lies. Recently, some hoaxers have stepped up the intensity of their twisted campaign in an effort to draw more people into this destructive tale of misinformation and continue to disrupt the lives of victims' families.

 In the immediate aftermath of the senseless atrocity, the hoaxers labeled virtually everyone in Newtown as involved in the alleged plot to fake the shootings, including police, medical personnel and — most egregiously — the parents whose young children had just been slaughtered. Bloggers and YouTubers from across the Internet accused these grief-stricken parents of being paid actors and told them that their children never existed. Emergency responders and school staff, whose acts of heroism saved lives and helped mitigate the tragedy, were likewise scoffed at and accused of playing parts in this so-called scripted event.

 Fortunately, saner minds generally have prevailed in this war of fact over fiction. Diligent researchers pored through mountains of evidence from multiple sources, including the voluminous final report submitted by the state of Connecticut, and thoroughly debunked the multiple false theories and claims proffered by the hoaxer community. As a result, much of the hysteria died down and many former skeptics were relieved to learn that their suspicions were unfounded.

 Unfortunately, there still exists a small but obsessive faction of hoaxers who are either unable or unwilling to objectively discern the hard facts from among the fleeting hunches and groundless accusations. Others are well aware of the truth but exploit the tragedy for their own aggrandizement. Regardless of their motivation, all have one thing in common: They persist in stalking and harassing the Sandy Hook parents and others intimately connected to the tragedy.

 Among their most active leaders is Tony Mead, apparently a resident of Florida. For several months, this serial cyber stalker has hosted a Facebook page where he has amassed a cult following of like-minded hoaxers who ravenously feed off each other's paranoia and hatred for anyone who was affected by the Sandy Hook tragedy.

 This is not a place where meaningful discussions are held or investigative inquiries are made. This is a place where strategies are plotted against grieving relatives and children's identities are stolen and exploited to fulfill a twisted fantasy.

 Mead's contempt for the slain children is evidenced by the image that graces his Facebook page: A pale-white little girl with dark rings around her eyes. She is dirty, as if she has just crawled from the grave. A filthy forefinger is pressed against her pursed lips. Her devious grin implying that she is an undead or zombie child who is keeping a deadly secret from the gullible masses.

 The conversations held on this page are a morbid reflection of that image. Anyone stumbling upon this page by accident could easily mistake it as a meeting place for necrophiliacs and child predators. Photographs of the slain children are posted along with derogatory comments, often accusing them of being actors themselves or part of a satanic cult. Parents of these murdered children are regarded with the utmost contempt. Some posters make threats, while others fantasize about putting parents and others they consider conspirators away behind bars.

Veronique and Lenny Pozner are the parents of Noah Pozner, one of the 20 children killed in the December 14, 2012, Sandy Hook massacre. Mr. Lenny Pozner founded the HONR Network, aimed at combating conspiracy theorists on mass shootings.

Stopping the Continual and Intentional Torment of Victims –

After suffering the agonizing emotional pain of the loss of a loved one to violence, grieving family members are forced to endure emotional stress in the form of hostile confrontation, online slander and defamation, and disparagement of the memory of their loved one, as well as the denigration of the tribulation they have experienced as a result of the death of their loved one. No one should have to endure such hateful treatment at the hands of fellow members of society, especially after suffering profound loss to an unspeakable act of violence.

 The HONR Network believes that decent society should not tolerate those who exploit tragedies and prey on the victims of violent crimes as in the case of Veronique and Lenny Pozner. Americans who’ve lost their loved ones should be allowed to grieve in peace without being harassed, exploited or subjected to online defamation. Unfortunately, the publicity surrounding most high-profile tragedies makes these vulnerable people ideal targets for this kind of persecution

 We Take Action Against the Abusers –

Most members of society are allowed to grieve in peace, surrounded by an atmosphere of compassion. This has not been the case for many family members of victims who lost their lives to tragic, highly publicized mass killings. It isn’t fair or acceptable. Action must be taken to restore peace and tranquility to those personally affected by the despicable cruelty cast upon them by individuals acting under the ‘truth movement.’ As a society, the right to free speech is important to all of us, but there is a fine line between freedom of speech and freedom to abuse and defame others. The Hoaxers and Gun Truthers are regularly crossing that line, and must not be allowed to impart this sort of hatred unimpeded. Until these malicious abusers anonymous identities are revealed and they are burdened by consequences, they will not stop stalking and tormenting innocent people who are trying to go on with their lives and heal from the emotional trauma suffered as a result of their tragic loss.

 We’re In This Together –

Most of us remember where we were, and the profound sadness we felt when we heard about each of the horrific tragedies that unfolded in recent years. Our sadness was for the victims who lost their lives, and for the families left to suffer unimaginable emotional pain for the rest of theirs. Grief is a painful process to go through, but it is a natural and necessary one in healing.

 Families in grief have the right to do so in peace and dignity. Regrettably, victims’ families are being cheated out of this basic human dignity, and being subjected to unspeakable harassment on an ongoing basis. We need to band together as a community of caring individuals, and act to stop these abusers from inflicting any further harm to people who have committed no crime, and simply want to be left alone to grieve their loved ones and live out the rest of their lives in peace.

On December 14, 2012, Lenny Pozner dropped off his three children, Sophia, Arielle, and Noah, at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Noah had recently turned 6, and on the drive over they listened to his favorite song, “Gangnam Style,” for what turned out to be the last time. Half an hour later, while Sophia and Arielle hid nearby, Adam Lanza walked into Noah’s first-grade class with an AR-15 rifle. Noah was the youngest of the 20 children and seven adults killed in one of the deadliest shootings in American history. When the medical examiner found Noah lying face up in a Batman sweatshirt, his jaw had been blown off. Lenny and his wife, Veronique, raced to the school as soon as they heard the news, but had to wait for hours alongside other parents to learn their son’s fate

 It didn’t take much longer for Lenny Pozner to find out that many people didn’t believe his son had died or even that he had lived at all. Days after the rampage, a man walked around Newtown filming a video in which he declared that the massacre had been staged by “some sort of New World Order global elitists” intent on taking away our guns and our liberty. A week later, James Tracy, a professor at Florida Atlantic University, wrote a blog post expressing doubts about the massacre. By January, a 30-minute YouTube video, titled “The Sandy Hook Shooting — Fully Exposed,” which asked questions like “Wouldn’t frantic kids be a difficult target to hit?,” had been viewed more than 10 million times.

 As the families grieved, conspiracy theorists began to press their case in ways that Newtown couldn’t avoid. State officials received anonymous phone calls at their homes, late at night, demanding answers: Why were there no trauma helicopters? What happened to the initial reports of a second shooter? A Virginia man stole playground signs memorializing two of the victims, and then called their parents to say that the burglary shouldn’t affect them, since their children had never existed. At one point, Pozner was checking into a hotel out of town when the clerk looked up from the address on his driver’s license and said, “Oh, Sandy Hook — the government did that.” Pozner had tried his best to ignore the conspiracies, but eventually they disrupted his grieving process so much that he could no longer turn a blind eye. “Conspiracy theorists erase the human aspect of history,” Pozner said this summer. “My child — who lived, who was a real person — is basically going to be erased.”

 The Pozners moved to Newtown in 2005, partly to send their kids to better schools, but after Noah’s death they saw no choice but to leave. “What happened just weighed on the town like a Chernobyl-like cloud,” Veronique told me from her home in a state far from Newtown that the Pozners prefer not to identify, given the threats that conspiracy theorists have leveled against some Sandy Hook families. The Pozners’ marriage had been falling apart before the shooting, and though Noah’s death briefly brought them back together, the couple eventually divorced. They still co-parent their daughters, who developed a fear of the dark after the shooting and asked Veronique to find a home in a gated community.

 Lenny, who has a goatee and a middle-aged paunch, lives by himself a few miles from Veronique. Since relocating, he has moved apartments four times and gets his mail delivered to a P.O. Box on the other side of the state. “It’s part of what I need to do to stay vigilant,” he said. After eight months in his newest home, the living room was sparsely furnished, save for a painting of Noah and a cluttered coffee table topped with his daughters’ Barbie dolls and a book called The Meaning of Life.

 “I prefer the term hoaxer to truther,” Lenny said, kicking a pair of jeans and Adidas flip-flops onto the footrest of leather Barcalounger. “There’s nothing truthful about it.” There is no universal Sandy Hook hoax narrative, but the theories generally center on the idea that a powerful force (the Obama administration, gun-control groups, the Illuminati) staged the shooting, with the assistance of paid “crisis actors,” including the Pozners, the other Sandy Hook families, and countless Newtown residents, government officials, and media outlets. The children are said to have never existed or to be living in an elaborate witness-­protection program.

 Conspiracy theories run deep in the American consciousness — 61 percent of Americans believe Lee Harvey Oswald didn’t act alone — but a mass shooting had never drawn the conspiratorial attention that Sandy Hook did. The modern internet is partly to blame, with hours of uploaded cable-news coverage and reams of documents to parse for circumstantial evidence.

 The internet also made it easier to reach victims, and the Pozners became an early target for hoaxers. Veronique, who is a nurse, joined several parents in channelling her grief into vocal gun-control advocacy. One early conspiracy theory held that she was actually a Swiss diplomat named Veronique Haller, who once attended a United Nations arms-control summit. (Veronique is Swiss, and her maiden name is Haller.) Hoaxers quickly scoured family photos on Veronique’s online accounts and began dissecting them for odd shadows or strange poses, suggesting that she had been inserted into the family via Photoshop.

 Lenny may have been the first Newtown parent to discover that conspiracy theorists didn’t believe his son had been killed, because he used to be a serious conspiracy theorist himself. “I probably listened to an Alex Jones podcast after I dropped the kids off at school that morning,” Lenny Pozner said, referencing the fearmongering proprietor of InfoWars. Pozner had entertained everything from specific cover-ups (the moon landing was faked) to geopolitical intrigue (the “real” reasons why the price of gold sometimes shifted so dramatically) and saw value in skepticism. But for him, the appeal of conspiracy theories was the same as watching a good science-fiction movie. “I have an imaginative mind,” he said.

 When he first discovered the theories about Noah, Lenny, who grew up in Brooklyn, made only a half-hearted attempt to respond. “I feel that your type of show created these hateful people,” Pozner wrote in an email to Alex Jones, to which one of Jones’s employees replied that Jones would love to speak to him if “we confirm that you are the real Lenny Pozner.” Pozner declined, in part because he found himself unable to do much of anything.

The HONR Network believes that decent society should not tolerate those who exploit tragedies and prey on the victims of violent crimes. Americans who’ve lost their loved ones should be allowed to grieve in peace without being harassed, exploited or subjected to online defamation. Unfortunately, the publicity surrounding most high-profile tragedies makes these vulnerable people ideal targets for this kind of persecution.

 HONR Network is committed to standing up in defense of victims and their families affected by incidences of mass violence. With every tragic new incident, conspiracy theorists are renewed in their zeal to unleash torrents of abuse, harassment, defamation and hate towards survivors and their families. Some are driven by pure delusion that such incidences are staged hoaxes, while others simply for profit.  Whatever the reason, HONR Network is dedicated to taking necessary action, within legal parameters, to bring accountability to Abusive Hoaxers; whether social or legal.  The viciousness and cruelty visited upon those in trauma, pain, and grief by callous sociopaths cannot go unchallenged.  The legions of additional followers the slanderous rhetoric attracts to churn out even more recruits to the mass delusion, and subsequent harassment of innocents, must be abated.

 HONR Network is currently undertaking the task of financially assisting Sandy Hook parent Lenny Pozner, who’s 6 year old son Noah was killed in his elementary school along with 19 of his classmates and 6 female educators, to civilly prosecute Wolfgang Halbig.

 As Mr. Pozner and his family grapple to deal with grief and moving on with life without Noah, Wolfgang Halbig spreads slanderous and defamatory propaganda against Mr. Lenny Pozner and his family, as well as that of the other Sandy Hook victims. Mr. Halbig’s campaign of disinformation and hate speech has resulted in the escalation of harassment and death threats toward Mr. Pozner, and continues to recruit new foot soldiers to the Sandy Hook truth movement every day.  Recent history has demonstrated that some of these “truther” types are dangerous to society, and have committed a slew of crimes as a result of their mindset.

 In the wake of recent mass murders such as the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, Boston Marathon bombing, and the Orlando Pulse nightclub shooting. Conspiracy theorists have descended upon the bereaved like vultures, accusing them of being actors in elaborately staged government plots to deceive the public.  

 Then there are the emotionally disturbed and mentally ill individuals who are easily provoked by the false information spread by conspiracy theorists. They target the surviving family members and stalk them relentlessly, issuing tangible threats and often telling the victims that their loved ones didn’t die—or worse yet—never existed.

A Florida professor who has publicly doubted whether the 2012 massacre of children in Newtown, Connecticut, really happened was fired this week.

 James Tracy, who teaches communications and mass media at Florida Atlantic University, was told of his termination on Tuesday night, the school said in a statement. He declined to comment to NBC News, saying his lawyers advised him to stay quiet while negotiating with the school.

 His removal followed years of controversy over Tracy's off-campus writings, including a personal blog, in which he has questioned the killings at Sandy Hook Elementary School and other mass shootings. The case has raised questions about free speech and academic freedom, and whether Tracy crossed the line from saying something unpopular to doing actual harm.

 The firestorm culminated with allegations of harassment by one the parents of one of the children killed at Sandy Hook.

 Last month, Lenny Pozner and Veronique Pozner, whose 6-year-old son was among 20 children killed at the school, wrote an op-ed in a Florida newspaper saying he'd sent them a certified letter demanding proof their boy ever lived. The Pozners said they complained to the police.

Lenny Pozner has been one of the few parents to speak openly about the tragedy and has even offered to dispel myths created and propagated by a small but obsessive cadre of conspiracy theorists known as Hoaxers. As the saying goes, no good deed goes unpunished. Because of his forthrightness, Lenny has become the primary focus of attacks emanating from this cult-like group, whose loosely affiliated members have issued multiple death threats and leveled a host of false accusations against him, including the absurd claim that he faked his own son’s death, among other despicable and unfounded charges.

A few days later, Florida Atlantic sent Tracy a letter saying it was taking steps to fire him.

 In a brief interview with NBC News on Dec. 19, Tracy said his letter to the Pozners was a response to a copyright infringement claim by the Pozners demanding he remove photos of their son from his website.

 But asked if he accepted that the boy died at Sandy Hook, Tracy replied, "I don't."

 He added, "Nobody died at Sandy Hook." He referred a reporter to a recently published book by that name.

 On Tuesday, Florida Atlantic sent Tracy a letter telling him he was fired.

 The letter did not specifically cite Tracy's comments on Sandy Hook as a reason. Instead, Vice Provost Diane Alperin said he had repeatedly broken university rules by failing to disclose his outside work, including his blog, causing a "conflict of commitment" and making it impossible for the school determine if he had any professional conflicts of interest. Alperin called Tracy "recalcitrant."

 She also upbraided him for using university resources for his outside work, which she did not detail.