Standards

How this archive sources, labels, and corrects its case files. These rules bind every page on the site, including this one.

The three tiers

Every material statement in a case file belongs to exactly one tier, and the tier is labeled where the statement appears.

Tier 1 — Court-proven. Facts established by the judicial record: docket entries, charges, verdicts, sentences, court orders, and official releases from prosecutors and custodial agencies. When two sources disagree about a Tier 1 fact, the court docket controls, and the disagreement is disclosed in the file rather than silently resolved.

Tier 2 — Attributed allegations. Claims made by identifiable people or identifiable publications: survivor petitions, public reviews, named reporting, civil complaints that have not been adjudicated. Tier 2 material is always attributed to its source and always labeled as allegation. An allegation’s presence in a case file means it was made and can be checked against its source — nothing more. It is never restated elsewhere on this site as fact.

Tier 3 — Open questions. Gaps in the public record: facts that should be knowable and are not, discrepancies between official sources, records that have been requested and not produced. Tier 3 items are phrased as questions. When a record arrives, the item is answered, re-tiered, or closed — in public, with the date.

Sourcing rules

• Case files are built from primary sources wherever they exist: court dockets and filings, official press releases, corrections and registry records, and documents produced in response to records requests.
• Sources are linked, not copied. This archive paraphrases; it does not republish articles or books at length, and it quotes copyrighted material only briefly, if at all.
• Every factual claim carries its source, and every case file lists its sources in full. A claim whose source cannot be produced does not run.
• Institutions that are distinct are never merged, however similar their names, and individuals are never identified across cases on similarity alone.

The evidence archive

Every claim on this site is backed by an archived copy of its source, held in the archive’s evidence vault and indexed in its records. Each capture records what the source said, the date and time it was captured, where it was captured from, and a SHA-256 cryptographic hash of the stored copy. The copies are retained even if the original is edited, moved, or deleted: if a source changes, the vault still holds what it said when this archive relied on it, and the hash shows the copy has not been altered since capture. A claim whose source cannot be produced from the vault does not run.

Institution profiles follow the same discipline. Each profile states what was requested of the institution — records, transcripts, preservation of its files — and what the institution answered in response, including when the answer, as of the date shown on the profile, is nothing at all.

Privacy rules

• No minor victim is ever named or identified, directly or by accumulation of detail. Identifying details of any victim are published only where the judicial record itself has made them public and republication serves the record — and never for a minor.
• Survivor submissions are published only within the consent tier the submitter chose: with their name, anonymously, or not at all. “Not at all” means not at all, permanently.
• Living individuals who have not been charged are described only as the public record describes them, in the tier their description belongs to.

The Paper Trail

Case files are tested against records, not merely written from them. For Case No. 1, six formal records requests are outstanding — the same testing instrument that stands behind every institution profile on this site:

The full log — recipients, addresses, and what each request asks for — is kept on the Case No. 1 file and in the school’s dossier. Non-responses are recorded as faithfully as responses, and when a record arrives the log and every affected page are updated the same day.

Corrections policy

This archive corrects itself in public. An error, once confirmed, is fixed in place and noted in the case file with the date of the correction and what changed. Case files are living documents: they are updated as appeals are decided, custody changes, and requested records arrive — each update dated and sourced. A case file’s records log records non-responses as faithfully as responses.

What this archive is not

It is not a court, a newsroom, or a law firm. It renders no verdicts beyond the ones courts have already rendered, and it offers no legal advice. It is a reading room: the public record, organized, labeled, and kept current.