Writer gets 5 yrs. in Jewish-site threats

A FORMER journalist who made bomb threats against Jewish community centers as part of a vicious revenge plot against his ex-girlfriend was sentenced to five years in prison Wednesday — after his ex told a judge, “I’m not convinced that he still won’t try to kill me.”

The moving statement by Francesca Rossi detailed Juan Thompson’s extraordinary, relentless abuse that culminated in his threats to a dozen Jewish centers via email that he attributed to her.

“He struck fear into the heart of the Jewish community in his vendetta against me,” Rossi, a social worker from Brooklyn, said in Manhattan Federal Court.

Before the bomb threats, Thompson, 32, terrorized Rossi online while they were still dating, menacing her through accounts he set up in the names of ex-boyfriends, she said.

“He always had a voyeuristic enjoyment in my suffering — why else would he have anonymously terrorized me when we slept in the same bed?” she said.

When Rossi realized in July 2016 that Thompson had been manipulating her, she broke up with him — and the threats worsened.

Soon Thompson was tormenting her, her friends, co-workers and family.

Thompson’s journalism career had simultaneously fallen apart for fabricating sources.

“He painted me as an antiSemite, a racist, a drunk, a slut, a drug dealer, a child pornographer a nd a gun runner,” said Rossi, who wore a shirt reading “Believe Women.”

But law enforcement declined to intervene until Thompson’s mania terrorized Jewish people across the country. Cops had been reluctant to pursue the case due to Thompson’s sophisticated use of computer programs that ensured his anonymity, Rossi said.

In one threat to a Jewish center in Michigan, Thompson said he was “eager for a Jewish Newtown.” Another bomb threat forced the evacuation of the Anti-Defamation League’s Midtown office.

“My abuse was not legitimized until an entire community and the country was terrorized,” Rossi said.

She called for laws to better address online harassment.

“This is what domestic violence looks like now,” Rossi said.

Judge Kevin Castel called Rossi’s remarks one of the “most eloquent presentations” ever in his courtroom. Thompson’s behavior was domestic terrorism, he said.

“It really was his intelligence and creativity that made him such a horror,” Castel said. “He used the gifts he had, the talent he had, as weaponry.”

Thompson was arrested on March 3 and later pleaded guilty to cyberstalking and making hoax bomb threats.

“Thompson’s harassment and threats caused severe distress to both his victim and to Jewish communities around the country,” acting Manhattan U.S. Attorney Joon Kim said.

Thompson’s attorney, Mark Gombiner, said his client had come from poverty in St. Louis and was struggling with mental illness and alcoholism at the time of the harassment. He vowed to appeal the sentence.

“I wish to apologize to Ms. Rossi,” Thompson said in brief remarks. “I know the pain she suffered.

Thompson was trying to address “strands of misogyny that remain in me,” he added.