Living Persons Policy

How CLCI Hub handles claims about living individuals — leaders, founders, senior figures, named ex-members. Extra source-strength requirements, the allegation-versus-conviction distinction, and what we will not publish about people who can still be harmed by what we say.

Group profiles necessarily name individuals: founders, current leaders, documented victims, named ex-members who have spoken publicly. Some of these people are dead and the historical record is fixed; some are alive and the story is still being written. We apply additional care to claims about living people. This page documents that care, mostly so readers can see where we are deliberately holding back and where we are not.

Why a living-persons policy

The risks of inaccurate writing about a living person are categorically different from the risks of inaccurate writing about a deceased one. A person who is still alive can be:

Wrongly identified with a pattern of behaviour they did not engage in;
Subjected to harassment, threats, or violence by readers acting on what we wrote;
Defamed in a jurisdiction where the legal standard for defamation differs from ours;
Materially harmed in employment, family relationships, or safety;
Pre-judged in a legal process that has not yet concluded.

These risks attach to leaders, to senior figures, to alleged victims, to named ex-members, and to ordinary current members named in profiles. The editorial discipline is to be especially careful about every one.

Allegation versus conviction — the load-bearing distinction

The most important sentence on this page: a court conviction is a finding; an allegation is not. We write differently about each.

Convicted of X in Y court (year). A criminal verdict is reported in our voice with the case name, jurisdiction, and disposition. We can write: “Convicted of [specific charge] in [court] in [year]; sentenced to [specific sentence].”
Civil judgment against X. A civil judgment is a finding by a court at a lower evidentiary bar than criminal conviction. We report it with explicit indication of the jurisdiction and the standard of proof (“civil judgment for $X in Y court, on the balance-of-probabilities standard”), and note any active appeal.
Settlement. A settled civil case is reported as such; we do not infer guilt or innocence from settlement.
Investigation finding. A government or regulator finding against a person is reported with the institution's name, the date, and the disposition. If the finding has been appealed or vacated, we say so.
Alleged. An allegation in journalism, in ex-member testimony, or in a court filing not yet adjudicated is reported as an allegation, attributed, dated, and accompanied by the subject's public response where it exists.
Acquittal or dismissal. Where a court has explicitly acquitted or dismissed for lack of evidence, we report the acquittal as a finding. We do not silently retain the allegation as if the court had not ruled.

Where multiple courts and inquiries have ruled inconsistently — common for figures with cross-jurisdictional reach — we report each ruling separately with its date and jurisdiction rather than collapsing them.

Public-role relevance

Not everything about a leader's life is fair material for a public profile. We confine claims about living individuals to material that bears directly on the documented control patterns of the group they lead or publicly represent. Relevant categories:

Founding, succession, and current leadership role;
Public doctrine the person has taught or written;
Public disciplinary or governance actions the person has been involved in;
Court or regulator findings against the person in connection with the group;
Public allegations against the person in connection with the group, properly attributed and dated.

Categories we will not address on a profile:

Private health information about a living person, except where the person has made it public themselves;
Private family relationships not connected to the group's operational pattern;
Sexual orientation, gender identity, or other identity facts where the person has not made them public;
Speculation about the person's motivations or mental state;
Identifying information about the person's minor children;
Home address, daily routine, or any other security-sensitive personal information.

Naming alleged victims

We name alleged victims of named individuals only where the alleged victim has chosen to be named publicly themselves — through sworn court testimony in their own name, an on-the-record interview, a published memoir, or a public social-media account on the relevant facts. We do not surface the names of alleged victims who have chosen pseudonymous or anonymous routes, even where those names appear elsewhere on the public internet. Where a court ruling or government inquiry uses a real name for a witness, we weight that against our own editorial choice and typically follow the court's usage.

Where alleged victims are minors, we never publish identifying detail beyond what is already in the formal court record, and we typically use less detail than the court record does.

Source-strength requirements for living-persons claims

Each category of claim about a living individual carries a source-strength floor below which we will not publish in our own voice.

Criminal-finding claim. Court ruling required. Cited by case name and jurisdiction.
Civil-finding claim. Court ruling or formal settlement required. Cited with standard of proof.
Regulator-finding claim. Formal investigation report required. Cited by institution and date.
Allegation claim. At least one named-source secondary publication (long-form journalism in an outlet with editorial standards, peer-reviewed academic work, or named on-the-record ex-member testimony carried in such an outlet). We treat allegations as allegations and date them.
Doctrinal claim. Public statement by the person or authorised group publication. Quoted, cited by source and date.
Role claim. Public statement, organisational documentation, or credible journalistic reporting.

We do not publish claims about living individuals on the basis of anonymous online testimony alone. We do not publish claims about living individuals on the basis of a single unverified leak. We do not publish speculative characterological claims (“X is a narcissist”, “X is a psychopath”); even where qualified clinicians have made such claims publicly, we do not endorse them in our own voice.

Right-of-reply routing

Living individuals named on CLCI Hub profiles — leaders, senior figures, named ex-members, anyone whose role is materially described — may submit a response through the standard Right of Reply process. The process is the same as for organisations: a specific quoted claim, the response in the person's own words, role and authority, optional supporting sources.

Where a response materially adds context or contradicts the published claim, we publish it alongside the original characterisation. Where a response is a flat denial without supporting evidence, we publish the denial as such. Where a response demands removal of sourced public-record material, we explain that we cannot honour the demand but invite further substantive material that might change the characterisation.

Posthumous handling

When a named individual dies, the editorial bar shifts. We do not publish material we held back during the person's lifetime if the only reason for holding it back was personal-harm risk to them. We do continue to respect privacy considerations affecting still-living family members and identified third parties. Where a death has produced new disclosures (court files unsealed, family members speaking publicly for the first time, archival material released) we update the profile and the relevant sources.

What this policy does not protect against

Honesty: this policy reduces — but does not eliminate — the risk of a living person being mischaracterised on this site. We have made specific editorial errors in the past and will make more in the future. The Corrections and Right of Reply routes are the standard mechanism for individuals (or their authorised representatives) to flag errors; the Transparency Report logs the volume and disposition of such requests.