Source Policy

The CLCI Hub source hierarchy — how we rank different evidence types, how we weigh ex-member testimony, and how low-confidence entries are marked.

Three reliability tiers

Every source on CLCI Hub is internally classified into one of three reliability tiers, surfaced on group profiles via a small reliability badge.

Primary sources

Court records and judgments (criminal verdicts, civil judgments, settlement records)
Government investigation reports (state attorney-general findings, royal commissions, parliamentary inquiries)
Tax-court rulings, charity-commission decisions, regulatory enforcement actions
Organisational public statements (the group's own published material — useful for what they say about themselves)
Sealed-then-released documents disclosed under freedom-of-information process

Primary sources carry the highest evidentiary weight. A claim documented in a court judgment or government report can support a High-confidence rating.

Secondary sources

Peer-reviewed academic work (journal articles, university-press books, doctoral theses)
Long-form journalistic investigations from established outlets with editorial standards (Christianity Today, The New York Times, Reuters, BBC, The Guardian, Le Monde, Der Spiegel, The Hindu, Asahi Shimbun, etc.)
Independent documentary films from established production houses (Netflix, HBO, BBC, Frontline)
Books from major trade publishers with editorial review

Secondary sources can support High or Medium confidence depending on the claim's specificity and whether multiple independent sources corroborate.

Tertiary sources

Aggregator sites and encyclopaedia entries (used as starting points, not as primary support)
Single-author opinion pieces in reputable outlets
Self-published memoirs and ex-member blogs (used carefully — see below)
Podcast episodes (used as pointers to underlying sources)

Tertiary sources alone typically warrant only Medium or Low confidence. We prefer to use tertiary sources to point readers toward primary or secondary material rather than as primary support for specific factual claims.

Ex-member testimony

Ex-member testimony is the single most contested source category. We apply a consistent framework:

Named ex-members who have spoken publicly — court declarations, journalist-attributed interviews, published memoirs — are cited by name and treated as secondary sources for the specific facts they personally witnessed.
Survivor-network advocacy materials (e.g. Telling The Truth for Two by Twos, Holding Out Help for FLDS, Mental Health Resources for Anabaptist exits) are treated as secondary sources where the network has editorial review and primary-document linkage.
Anonymous online accounts on Reddit, forums, or social media are treated as Low-reliability and used only as confirmation of patterns already documented in primary or secondary sources, never as the sole support for a claim.
Single-source allegations against named individuals are not published. Where a single source has made a public allegation, we describe the allegation as such, attribute it, note that it is contested or unconfirmed, and link to the public record (court filing, news report) rather than restating the allegation in our own voice.

How sources are weighted

Confidence ratings on group profiles depend on the source mix:

High confidence — multiple primary sources (court / government / academic) plus secondary sources documenting independent corroboration.
Medium confidence — credible secondary sources but limited or no primary record; or a primary record on some claims and tertiary support on others.
Low confidence — fragmentary anecdotal reports, single-source claims, or active controversy. Low-confidence ratings are provisional.

How low-confidence entries are marked

Every group profile displays its confidence rating prominently in the header. Low- confidence ratings carry a tooltip-link to the FAQ confidence explainer. Future rounds will add a quality-tier badge (see the data-model documentation) that also surfaces “needs-sources” / “thin” / “merge-candidate” statuses for transparency.

Sources we will not use

Leaked private documents we cannot independently authenticate.
Sealed court material that is not yet public.
Anonymous testimony as sole support for a specific factual claim.
Material from interested parties without disclosure of that interest.
Sources that have been retracted by their original publisher.
AI-generated text presented as a primary source.

Citation format

Every group profile lists its sources at the bottom of the page. Each source is rendered as a human-readable citation (author, title, publisher, year) followed by a Google Scholar search link for academic sources. Where a stable public URL exists for a court record, government report, or news article we are migrating to include direct links over time.

We do not fabricate URLs. If a source title is well-documented in print or court records without a stable web location, we cite it by name only.

Reporting source problems

If you find a misattributed, retracted, or otherwise problematic source on a profile, please use the Corrections process to flag it. We log source corrections in the public changelog.