Warwick Man Pleads Guilty To Sending Antisemitic Texts

WARWICK TOWNSHIP, PA — A Warwick Township man will avoid serving jail time after he pleaded guilty Tuesday to two counts of harassment for sending a series of antisemitic text messages to a Jewish man on Thanksgiving last year.

Bucks County Judge Rea Boylan sentenced Hunter Robert-William Ryan to two years of probation, 50 hours of community service to benefit the Jewish community and no direct or indirect contact with the victim "unless some form of restorative meeting can be arranged" with his former acquaintance, the Bucks County District Attorney's Office said in a news release.

In addition to a tirade of angry texts delivered on Nov. 28, 2019, the 21-year-old sent the victim images depicting a Nazi flag and symbols, photos, a video of Adolf Hitler and an image of Anne Frank followed by a photo of ashes, according to the district attorney's office. The messages were sent over the course of 12 hours beginning at 12 p.m. Thanksgiving and continuing until 1 a.m. the following day.

Prior to the plea deal, Ryan spent a month at a mental health treatment facility in Tennessee. He also studied for two days with the Peace Center in Langhorne and visited the Holocaust museum during trips arranged by Deputy District Attorney Marc Furber and Ryan's attorney.

In court Tuesday, Ryan told Judge Boylan he now understands what he said "was serious and not funny," the district attorney's office said.

When the charges were first announced in December, District Attorney Matthew D. Weintraub stated that hate speech becomes criminal when it is implicitly harassing or threatening toward someone else. If you are threatened in a text message or on social media, you can take screen shots of the offending messages and report them to police, Weintraub added.

The case was prosecuted by Deputy District Attorney Marc Furber and investigated by the Buckingham Township Police Department.