New York Daily News

NEWT0WN DAD’S WAR WITH LYING NET FIENDS

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EVERY MORNING, Sandy Hook dad Lenny Pozner opens his sock drawer to get dressed — and there they are.

His dead son’s striped pajamas, Batman costume and green flip flops mixed in with his own fresh laundry.

“Every day I open it, and every day he’s sort of present when I go through that ritual,” Pozner told the Daily News. “Noah is never far from my mind. I’m always focusing on Noah.”

Noah was the youngest of the 20 innocent children and six adults gunned down on December 14, 2012, at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn.

The adorable 6-year-old with apple cheeks and an irresistib­le smile arrived on campus that day with his twin sister Arielle and older sibling Sophia — and within an hour, his tiny body was riddled with bullets from a Bushmaster AR-15.

Five years later, Lenny Pozner still feels an unfathomab­le void. That’s something he expected.

What he didn’t expect were the still-unrelentin­g attacks from people he’s never even met.

Photos of Noah and the other victims continue to get picked apart online by so-called Sandy Hook “truthers” — conspiracy theorists who claim the massacre was staged by crisis actors.

Pozner, 50, tried to ignore the cruelty at first, but by 2014, he founded Honr Network, an organizati­on that actively combats online abuse of victims of public shootings.

“I guess I’m just not the type to turn a blind eye and pretend it doesn’t exist,” Pozner told The News.

He’s now fighting the hate and misinforma­tion on many fronts. He flags content for removal, files police reports, pursues civil litigation — and publicly calls people out.

“This is my battle. I didn’t pick it. It picked me,” he said.

It stands to reason Pozner’s work might compound his grief, opening him up to further abuse from online trolls who relish an engaged target.

But Pozner believes the problem is only getting worse, and soon his daughters will be old enough to venture onto the Internet unchaperon­ed.

The sisters were in adjacent rooms when their brother was murdered. He hopes they don’t remember much, but he knows eventually they’ll seek answers.

“They were in a war zone, where people were dying and screaming,” he said. “They have that soundtrack somewhere deep in their minds.”

Even before Sandy Hook, wild conspiracy theories were becoming an expected ancillary to mass-casualty events.

Indeed, Sandy Hook denier Alex Jones landed a primetime interview with NBC’s Megyn Kelly in June. Two months later, actor Scott Baio retweeted a meme suggesting the mom of slain Sandy Hook teacher Vicki Soto was the same crisis actor posing as the mom of Charlottes­ville car attack victim Heather Heyer.

After some backlash, Baio apologized for pushing the outrageous meme, but Soto’s sister said it was hard to forgive.

“To be honest, it’s heartbreak­ing,” Jillian Soto told The News in August. “My family has been attacked over and over. What people and accused Pozner of exploiting don’t understand is that no “children” online. matter what they believe, every In March, the man’s sister contacted time this comes up, it rips my family Boca Raton cops to claim apart.” Pozner targeted her 11-year-old

When a New York man who daughter by posting a photo of acknowledg­es Sandy Hook took the minor without consent, police place but pushes other conspiracy reports obtained by The theories online started sparring News said. with Honr more than a year The woman’s accusation­s ago, Pozner refused to back were ultimately deemed “unfounded,” down. He reported the man to police. an April police report confirmed.

The exchange quickly turned Pozner later identified the “very dark,” he said. woman on his blog and claimed

The man emailed the manager she knowingly filed “a fraudulent of Pozner’s former Florida apartment report targeting the parent of a complex in October 2016 victim of a violent crime.” The detective

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