Documentary record Bound by Fear

Data stories

Mechanisms, not traditions

Across 1,117 core records drawn from convictions, charges, civil litigation and official findings, recurring coded mechanisms appear in traditions with different histories and practices. These are classifications of records, not findings that every allegation was proved. This page sets out what the corpus supports and where the evidence thins out.

Read this before the charts

This corpus is a convenience sample of 1,117 core records selected because cited material documents, or in pending matters alleges, a spiritual-authority nexus. It is not a probability sample of abuse, of any tradition's practitioners, or of any population. It cannot support claims about how often this happens per capita, within any tradition, or relative to any tradition's size. It supports descriptive comparisons among the records included here.

42% of core records fall outside Christian traditions. That is the neutral baseline used throughout: a mechanism spread evenly across the corpus would sit near 42%. Departures from it are what the charts make visible. Cells resting on fewer than 5 records are suppressed rather than printed as a small number.

One record is one case or official record, whether it concerns one person or thousands. The corpus carries no structured victim count, so every figure on this page counts records, not victims. See “Every figure here counts cases, not people” below for what that means and what would fix it.

What this page cannot show

Every figure here counts records, not people

Every number, bar, table cell and percentage on this page counts records. One record is one case or official record, whether the underlying conduct harmed a single person or several hundred. A single-victim assault and a mass-casualty institutional-abuse record each contribute exactly one observation to every chart above and below.

That has a direct and systematic consequence: mass-victim events are understated in every proportion this page shows. Institutional abuse, trafficking networks and other records involving many victims count the same as a one-victim case in every rate, share and ranking on this page. None of those figures can be reweighted by victim count because the underlying field does not exist.

This gap prevents a responsible victim-count estimate. Only 22 of 1,117 core records (2%) state a victim count anywhere in their free text, so no aggregate, per-case average or weighted total is shown.

The fix is a structured countBand field (schema v2), populated from official sources at the point a record is added rather than mined after the fact from whatever free text happens to be on hand. The extraction pilot that scoped this measured a victim count stated in roughly 48% of official court and prosecutor documents — over twenty times the 2% this page can currently draw on from the existing corpus text. Populating countBand going forward, and back-filling it for existing sources where the underlying document supports it, is the single highest-value data addition on this project's roadmap: it is the only change that would let every chart on this page eventually show a victim-weighted view alongside the case-weighted one it shows now.

The lead finding

Recorded fatal outcomes vary by coercion mechanism

Some coercion mechanisms appear more often than others in records that ended in death or ritual murder. The spread is roughly 37× from top to bottom. The ordering is similar within Christian records alone (the hollow markers), which reduces one obvious compositional explanation. These are descriptive associations inside a selected corpus, not causal estimates.

Fatal-outcome rate by coercion mechanism, with the within-Christianity rate on the same rowA dot-and-bar ladder. For each mechanism, a solid bar and dot show the share of its records whose outcome was death or ritual murder across all traditions; a hollow ring shows the rate within Christian records. Each row is labelled with its record count. Full figures follow in the accompanying data table. 0% 16% 33% 49% 65% Violent occult ideology or sacrifice 65% n=20 Exorcism or deliverance 23% n=48 Prophecy or divine command 21% n=57 Ritual, oath, or initiation 19% n=103 Spiritual healing or treatment 14% n=197 Other spiritual authority or belief 13% n=62 Prosperity, divination, or curse-removal claim 12% n=73 Threatened spiritual consequence 11% n=88 Guru or spiritual-teacher authority 6% n=187 Sacred sex, purity, or sexual-energy claim 6% n=34 Religious marriage or family control 6% n=17 Curse or witchcraft threat 4% n=122 Institutional obedience or isolation 4% n=325 Pastoral or clerical authority 2% n=632
  • All traditions
  • Within Christian records only
Table: fatal-outcome rate by mechanism, overall and within Christianity
Share of each mechanism's records whose recorded outcome was death or ritual murder, across all traditions and within Christian records alone. Denominator for each rate is the record count in that column. Within-Christian rate is shown only where at least 5 Christian records carry the mechanism. Corpus-wide fatal rate is 7.1%; within Christianity it is 4.2%.
Mechanism Records (n) Fatal outcomes Fatal rate (all) Christian records (n) Fatal rate (Christian only)
Violent occult ideology or sacrifice 20 13 65.0% 1 < 5
Exorcism or deliverance 48 11 22.9% 27 22.2%
Prophecy or divine command 57 12 21.1% 40 15.0%
Ritual, oath, or initiation 103 20 19.4% 28 3.6%
Spiritual healing or treatment 197 27 13.7% 42 31.0%
Other spiritual authority or belief 62 8 12.9% 12 8.3%
Prosperity, divination, or curse-removal claim 73 9 12.3% 4 < 5
Threatened spiritual consequence 88 10 11.4% 49 16.3%
Guru or spiritual-teacher authority 187 12 6.4% 30 0.0%
Sacred sex, purity, or sexual-energy claim 34 2 5.9% 14 0.0%
Religious marriage or family control 17 1 5.9% 10 0.0%
Curse or witchcraft threat 122 5 4.1% 11 27.3%
Institutional obedience or isolation 325 13 4.0% 235 2.1%
Pastoral or clerical authority 632 11 1.7% 566 1.8%

Denominator: each mechanism's own record count (1,117 core records total). “Fatal” means the record's type is death or ritual murder. The rate is the share of included records coded as fatal, not a mortality risk for anyone subject to the mechanism. This is a record rate, not a victim rate: one fatal record may involve one death or many. The hollow markers show the same descriptive comparison within Christian records.

The structural finding

Most coercion mechanisms are structural, not tradition-bound

If these mechanisms were features of particular belief systems, each would cluster inside one tradition. Most do not. The dashed line marks the 42% corpus baseline; bars reaching well past it are mechanisms that recur across unrelated belief systems.

Share of each coercion mechanism occurring outside Christian traditionsA horizontal bar chart split into two bands. The first band holds well-evidenced mechanisms; the second holds four thinly evidenced mechanisms based on fewer than 35 records. Bar thickness increases with the number of records behind each estimate, and a horizontal whisker shows the 95 percent confidence interval. A dashed vertical line marks the 42 percent corpus baseline. Full figures follow in the accompanying data table. 42% BASELINEWell-evidenced mechanisms (n ≥ 35) Prosperity, divination, or curse-removal claim 95% n=73 Curse or witchcraft threat 91% n=122 Guru or spiritual-teacher authority 84% n=187 Other spiritual authority or belief 81% n=62 Spiritual healing or treatment 79% n=197 Ritual, oath, or initiation 73% n=103 Threatened spiritual consequence 44% n=88 Exorcism or deliverance 44% n=48 Prophecy or divine command 30% n=57 Institutional obedience or isolation 28% n=325 Pastoral or clerical authority 10% n=632 Thinly evidenced — read as indicative only (n < 35) Violent occult ideology or sacrifice 95% n=20 low n Sacred sex, purity, or sexual-energy claim 59% n=34 low n Religious marriage or family control 41% n=17 low n
Table: mechanism share outside Christian traditions
Share of each coercion mechanism's records occurring outside Christian traditions, with record count and 95% Wilson confidence interval. Denominator is each mechanism's own record count. Corpus baseline is 42%.
Mechanism Share outside Christian traditions 95% interval Records (n) Evidence strength
Violent occult ideology or sacrifice 95% 76%–99% 20 Low n — indicative only
Prosperity, divination, or curse-removal claim 95% 87%–98% 73 Well evidenced
Curse or witchcraft threat 91% 85%–95% 122 Well evidenced
Guru or spiritual-teacher authority 84% 78%–89% 187 Well evidenced
Other spiritual authority or belief 81% 69%–89% 62 Well evidenced
Spiritual healing or treatment 79% 72%–84% 197 Well evidenced
Ritual, oath, or initiation 73% 64%–80% 103 Well evidenced
Sacred sex, purity, or sexual-energy claim 59% 42%–74% 34 Low n — indicative only
Threatened spiritual consequence 44% 34%–55% 88 Well evidenced
Exorcism or deliverance 44% 31%–58% 48 Well evidenced
Religious marriage or family control 41% 22%–64% 17 Low n — indicative only
Prophecy or divine command 30% 20%–43% 57 Well evidenced
Institutional obedience or isolation 28% 23%–33% 325 Well evidenced
Pastoral or clerical authority 10% 8%–13% 632 Well evidenced

Denominator: each mechanism's own record count, within 1,117 core records. Bar thickness encodes n; the whisker is a 95% Wilson interval. The four mechanisms in the lower band rest on 17–34 records — their position is real but unstable, and a handful of new records could move them substantially. They are banded separately so they are never ranked against estimates built on hundreds of records.

Breadth

The broadest mechanisms span more than a dozen unrelated traditions

A mechanism appearing in one or two traditions may be a local practice. One appearing across a dozen unrelated traditions is a property of spiritual authority as a structure. Distinct-tradition count is a lower bound, and it is sensitive to how finely this taxonomy splits traditions.

Number of distinct traditions each coercion mechanism appears in, with the mechanism's record count. Denominator is 1,117 core records.
Mechanism Distinct traditions Records (n)
Ritual, oath, or initiation 17 103
Spiritual healing or treatment 15 197
Other spiritual authority or belief 14 62
Guru or spiritual-teacher authority 13 187
Threatened spiritual consequence 13 88
Prosperity, divination, or curse-removal claim 12 73
Institutional obedience or isolation 10 325
Violent occult ideology or sacrificelow n 9 20
Exorcism or deliverance 9 48
Curse or witchcraft threat 8 122
Sacred sex, purity, or sexual-energy claimlow n 8 34
Pastoral or clerical authority 8 632
Religious marriage or family controllow n 5 17
Prophecy or divine command 5 57

The complication

Compound coercion is the majority case, not the exception

693 of 1,117 core records — 62% — name two or more coded mechanisms, up to 6 on a single record. The categories therefore overlap and should not be read as mutually exclusive.

Number of coercion mechanisms named per recordA bar chart showing how many core records name one, two, three or more distinct coercion mechanisms. Figures follow in the accompanying table. 1 mechanism 424 38% 2 mechanisms 558 50% 3 mechanisms 121 11% 4 mechanisms 9 1% 5 mechanisms 4 0% 6 mechanisms 1 0%
Table: mechanisms named per record, and whether stacking predicts severity
Distribution of the number of coercion mechanisms named per record, with conviction rate and median parsed custodial sentence for each band. Denominator for share is 1,117 core records; sentence figures use only the subsample whose outcome text names an explicit term.
Mechanisms named Records Share of corpus
1 424 38.0%
2 558 50.0%
3 121 10.8%
4 9 0.8%
5 4 0.4%
6 1 0.1%
Fatal-outcome rate by number of mechanisms named. Fatal means record type death or ritual murder; denominator is the band's record count.
Band Records Fatal outcomes Fatal rate
One mechanism 424 22 5.2%
Two mechanisms 558 43 7.7%
Three or more 135 14 10.4%

Records with more coded mechanisms have a higher recorded fatal-outcome share

Records naming more mechanisms have these fatal-outcome shares: one mechanism 5.2%, two mechanisms 7.7%, three or more 10.4%. This is an unadjusted comparison and may reflect documentation depth, case mix, coding practice or selection. No adjusted causal estimate is presented. We do not chart conviction rate because inclusion is conditioned on a qualifying proceeding or finding, and sentence length is not comparable across the free-text records and jurisdictions.

Denominator: 1,117 core records. Fatal-outcome rate is the share of records whose type is death or ritual murder — a documented-outcome measure, not a risk. Stacking is associational: heavily coercive situations may simply generate more of everything, including documentation.

Which mechanisms stack

Authority claims are what the other mechanisms attach to

Each cell counts the records on which two mechanisms appear together. Darker and larger numbers mean heavier co-occurrence; every cell also prints its count, so nothing here depends on reading a shade. Cells below 5 records are suppressed and left blank.

This chart is wider than the screen. Scroll horizontally within it to see all mechanisms, or use the data table below instead.
Co-occurrence matrix of coercion mechanismsA symmetric grid in which each cell shows how many core records name both the row mechanism and the column mechanism. Counts are printed inside every unsuppressed cell. Full figures follow in the accompanying data table.Violent occult ideology 11 Prosperity, divination, 46 31 7 Curse or witchcraft thre 46 81 5 12 8Guru or spiritual-teache 17 21 13 19 7 64 38Other spiritual authorit 13 5 7 6Spiritual healing or tre 31 81 17 13 16 20 18 8 9 33Ritual, oath, or initiat 11 7 5 21 5 16 7 6 10 26Sacred sex, purity, or s 13 7 6 7 10 11Threatened spiritual con 19 20 6 7 16 17 33Exorcism or deliverance 12 18 7 6 19Religious marriage or fa 6 5Prophecy or divine comma 7 8 6 7 16 6 6 14 16Institutional obedience 64 7 9 10 10 17 14 215Pastoral or clerical aut 8 38 6 33 26 11 33 19 5 16 215 Violent occult ideology Prosperity, divination, Curse or witchcraft threGuru or spiritual-teacheOther spiritual authoritSpiritual healing or treRitual, oath, or initiatSacred sex, purity, or sThreatened spiritual conExorcism or deliveranceReligious marriage or faProphecy or divine commaInstitutional obedience Pastoral or clerical aut
Table: mechanism co-occurrence counts
Number of core records on which each pair of coercion mechanisms appears together. Blank cells are suppressed because fewer than 5 records support them. Denominator is 1,117 core records.
Mechanism Violent occult ideology or sacrificeProsperity, divination, or curse-removal claimCurse or witchcraft threatGuru or spiritual-teacher authorityOther spiritual authority or beliefSpiritual healing or treatmentRitual, oath, or initiationSacred sex, purity, or sexual-energy claimThreatened spiritual consequenceExorcism or deliveranceReligious marriage or family controlProphecy or divine commandInstitutional obedience or isolationPastoral or clerical authority
Violent occult ideology or sacrifice — <5 <5 <5 <5 <5 11 <5 <5 <5 <5 <5 <5 <5
Prosperity, divination, or curse-removal claim <5 — 46 <5 <5 31 7 <5 <5 <5 <5 <5 <5 <5
Curse or witchcraft threat <5 46 — <5 <5 81 5 <5 <5 12 <5 <5 <5 8
Guru or spiritual-teacher authority <5 <5 <5 — <5 17 21 13 19 <5 <5 7 64 38
Other spiritual authority or belief <5 <5 <5 <5 — 13 5 <5 <5 <5 <5 <5 7 6
Spiritual healing or treatment <5 31 81 17 13 — 16 <5 20 18 <5 8 9 33
Ritual, oath, or initiation 11 7 5 21 5 16 — 7 <5 <5 <5 6 10 26
Sacred sex, purity, or sexual-energy claim <5 <5 <5 13 <5 <5 7 — 6 <5 <5 7 10 11
Threatened spiritual consequence <5 <5 <5 19 <5 20 <5 6 — 7 <5 16 17 33
Exorcism or deliverance <5 <5 12 <5 <5 18 <5 <5 7 — <5 6 <5 19
Religious marriage or family control <5 <5 <5 <5 <5 <5 <5 <5 <5 <5 — 6 <5 5
Prophecy or divine command <5 <5 <5 7 <5 8 6 7 16 6 6 — 14 16
Institutional obedience or isolation <5 <5 <5 64 7 9 10 10 17 <5 <5 14 — 215
Pastoral or clerical authority <5 <5 8 38 6 33 26 11 33 19 5 16 215 —

Denominator: 1,117 core records. Cells are counts of records, not of victims or defendants. The matrix is symmetric; the diagonal is undefined and shown blank.

The deeper cut

When an institution is named, the coercion changes shape

735 of 1,117 core records name at least one organization; 382 name none. Those two populations do not look alike. Institutional obedience appears in 38% of records naming an organization against 12% of those that do not — the single largest divergence in the corpus. Where no institution is named, healing and curse claims rise instead: coercion that has to be manufactured case by case rather than inherited from a standing hierarchy.

Mechanism prevalence in records naming an institution versus records naming noneA paired bar chart. For each mechanism, the upper solid bar is its prevalence among records that name an organization and the lower outlined bar is its prevalence among records that do not. Each bar is labelled with its percentage. Full figures follow in the accompanying data table. Institutional obedience or isolation 38% inst. 12% none Pastoral or clerical authority 62% inst. 46% none Ritual, oath, or initiation 7% inst. 14% none Spiritual healing or treatment 15% inst. 23% none Other spiritual authority or belief 4% inst. 9% none Exorcism or deliverance 2% inst. 8% none Guru or spiritual-teacher authority 15% inst. 20% none Curse or witchcraft threat 12% inst. 8% noneInstitution namedNo institution named
Table: mechanism prevalence by whether an institution is named
Prevalence of each coercion mechanism among the 735 core records naming an organization, against the 382 that name none. Percentages use each population as its own denominator, so they do not sum to 100.
Mechanism Institution named (n) Institution named (%) No institution (n) No institution (%) Difference
Institutional obedience or isolation 280 38.1% 45 11.8% +26.3%
Pastoral or clerical authority 456 62.0% 176 46.1% +16.0%
Ritual, oath, or initiation 48 6.5% 55 14.4% −7.9%
Spiritual healing or treatment 111 15.1% 86 22.5% −7.4%
Other spiritual authority or belief 27 3.7% 35 9.2% −5.5%
Exorcism or deliverance 18 2.4% 30 7.9% −5.4%
Guru or spiritual-teacher authority 112 15.2% 75 19.6% −4.4%
Curse or witchcraft threat 90 12.2% 32 8.4% +3.9%
Threatened spiritual consequence 51 6.9% 37 9.7% −2.7%
Sacred sex, purity, or sexual-energy claim 28 3.8% 6 1.6% +2.2%
Prophecy or divine command 42 5.7% 15 3.9% +1.8%
Prosperity, divination, or curse-removal claim 52 7.1% 21 5.5% +1.6%
Religious marriage or family control 15 2.0% 2 0.5% +1.5%
Violent occult ideology or sacrifice 12 1.6% 8 2.1% −0.5%

Concentration among named organizations is weak. 804 distinct organizations appear across 735 records, and only 11 are named on 3 or more. This corpus does not show a small number of institutions accounting for the bulk of documented cases; it shows a long tail. That is at least partly a documentation artifact — large denominations are indexed, reported and litigated under a consistent name, while a standalone congregation may appear once and never again.

Organizations named on 3 or more core records, with record counts. Denominator is the 735 records naming an organization.
Organization named on 3 or more records Records
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints 7
Diocese of Lansing 5
Southern Baptist Convention 5
764 4
Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate 4
'Two by Twos' / 'The Truth' (nameless sect) 3
Archdiocese of Detroit 3
Church of England 3
Congregation of Christian Brothers 3
Jesus Army / Jesus Fellowship Church 3
Marist Brothers 3

Denominator: 735 records naming an organization and 382 naming none, of 1,117 core records. Organization names are recorded as they appear in sources and are not deduplicated across dioceses, provinces or renamings, so counts here are a floor.

What we did not chart

The paper trail runs deep, but three obvious charts would have lied

The court record behind these cases is substantial: 285 records carry appellate history, and 419 carry proceeding text naming an explicit custodial term. That depth invites three charts we deliberately did not build, because each would have manufactured a finding the data cannot support.

  • Conviction rate by mechanism. Inclusion is conditioned on a qualifying proceeding or official finding. The corpus has no population of comparable allegations that did not reach those evidence tiers, so a conviction-rate comparison would be circular.
  • Sentence severity by mechanism. The 419 parsed terms mix concurrent, cumulative and life sentences in free text across jurisdictions with fundamentally different sentencing regimes. They are not on a common scale and cannot be compared.
  • Time from offence to prosecution. The dating field records the year of prosecution or official finding, not the year of the underlying conduct, so any computed “lag” collapses to zero as an artifact rather than a measurement.

Every comparison on this page is also internal: mechanism against mechanism, inside one corpus, under one inclusion criterion. There is no external control — no matched sample of abuse prosecutions without a spiritual-authority element (teachers, coaches, doctors, youth leaders) to benchmark against. So the page can say exorcism cases are roughly 37 times more often fatal than pastoral cases, but not whether either is high or low against secular authority abuse. The planned control is a matched-methodology secular comparison corpus — same conviction-must-stand criterion, same coding, minus the spiritual element. No external statistic (NCANDS, BJS, ONS) is a valid substitute: their selection differs at every stage — victims rather than cases, substantiated rather than prosecuted, incidence rather than a curated archive.

Mechanism and harm

Different mechanisms attach to different harms

Each row shows how a mechanism's own records distribute across recorded harm types. Percentages are within each mechanism, so a mechanism resting on 632 records and one resting on a few dozen can be compared down a column. Counts below 5 are suppressed.

Distribution of each coercion mechanism's records across recorded harm types, shown as counts. Cells below 5 records are suppressed. Denominator for each row is that mechanism's own record count.
Mechanism n Child abuseSexual abuseDeathTraffickingRitual murderFraudPhysical abuseInstitutional abuseRitual crimeInterventionHonor killingForced marriageRetaliation
Pastoral or clerical authority 632 366 (58%) 228 (36%) 11 (2%) <5 <5 <5 5 (1%) 14 (2%) <5 <5 <5 <5 <5
Institutional obedience or isolation 325 161 (50%) 111 (34%) 13 (4%) 8 (2%) <5 <5 11 (3%) 17 (5%) <5 <5 <5 <5 <5
Spiritual healing or treatment 197 19 (10%) 86 (44%) 22 (11%) <5 5 (3%) 63 (32%) <5 <5 <5 <5 <5 <5 <5
Guru or spiritual-teacher authority 187 100 (53%) 64 (34%) 11 (6%) <5 <5 <5 <5 <5 <5 <5 <5 <5 <5
Curse or witchcraft threat 122 7 (6%) 21 (17%) <5 <5 <5 87 (71%) <5 <5 <5 <5 <5 <5 <5
Ritual, oath, or initiation 103 38 (37%) 32 (31%) 8 (8%) 8 (8%) 12 (12%) <5 <5 <5 <5 <5 <5 <5 <5
Threatened spiritual consequence 88 24 (27%) 45 (51%) 10 (11%) <5 <5 <5 <5 <5 <5 <5 <5 <5 <5
Prosperity, divination, or curse-removal claim 73 <5 8 (11%) 6 (8%) <5 <5 52 (71%) <5 <5 <5 <5 <5 <5 <5
Other spiritual authority or belief 62 18 (29%) 23 (37%) 6 (10%) 5 (8%) <5 5 (8%) <5 <5 <5 <5 <5 <5 <5
Prophecy or divine command 57 18 (32%) 22 (39%) 9 (16%) <5 <5 <5 <5 <5 <5 <5 <5 <5 <5
Exorcism or deliverance 48 8 (17%) 26 (54%) 7 (15%) <5 <5 <5 <5 <5 <5 <5 <5 <5 <5
Sacred sex, purity, or sexual-energy claim 34 6 (18%) 26 (76%) <5 <5 <5 <5 <5 <5 <5 <5 <5 <5 <5
Violent occult ideology or sacrifice 20 7 (35%) <5 5 (25%) <5 8 (40%) <5 <5 <5 <5 <5 <5 <5 <5
Religious marriage or family control 17 8 (47%) 5 (29%) <5 <5 <5 <5 <5 <5 <5 <5 <5 <5 <5

Denominator: each mechanism's own record count. Harm type is a single primary classification per record, so a case involving several harms is counted once under its recorded type — these rows understate co-occurring harm. The taxonomy's tail is thin: 5 of the 13 recorded types rest on fewer than 5 records corpus-wide, so most columns in this table are suppressed for most mechanisms. The type distribution and the mechanism-type lift below handle that thinness directly.

Type of crime

Child abuse and sexual abuse dominate the recorded harm types; most of the rest is a thin tail

Across 1,117 core records, child abuse (44.9%) and sexual abuse (32.9%) together account for the large majority of recorded harm types. Nine of the thirteen recorded types rest on fewer than 25 records, and 5 of them fall below this page's 5-record suppression floor entirely (8 records combined). Those are not drawn as individual bars — a chart that puts a single-record type on the same axis as a 499-record type invites readers to compare them as equally supported estimates, which they are not. They are pooled into one labelled band instead.

Distribution of core records by recorded harm typeA horizontal bar chart of 9 rows, one per recorded harm type plus a pooled "other" band for types below the suppression floor, showing each type's share of 1,117 core records. Full figures follow in the accompanying data table. Child abuse 501 (44.9%) Sexual abuse 368 (32.9%) Fraud 100 (9.0%) Death 54 (4.8%) Trafficking 25 (2.2%) Ritual murder 25 (2.2%) Physical abuse 18 (1.6%) Institutional abuse 18 (1.6%) Other harm types 8 (0.7%)
Table: recorded harm type distribution
Distribution of core records by recorded primary harm type. Types below 5 records corpus-wide are pooled into a single "other" row rather than shown individually. Denominator is 1,117 core records.
Harm type Records (n) Share of corpus
Child abuse 501 44.9%
Sexual abuse 368 32.9%
Fraud 100 9.0%
Death 54 4.8%
Trafficking 25 2.2%
Ritual murder 25 2.2%
Physical abuse 18 1.6%
Institutional abuse 18 1.6%
Other harm types 8 0.7%

Pooled “other” band: Ritual crime (4); Intervention (1); Honor killing (1); Forced marriage (1); Retaliation (1).

Denominator: 1,117 core records. Type is a single primary classification per record. This corpus's taxonomy tail is thin — several categories (ritual crime, intervention, honor killing, forced marriage, retaliation) exist as recognised classifications but are each documented in this archive on a handful of cases or fewer, which is a property of what this convenience sample was able to source, not a claim about how rare those harms are.

Mechanism and harm-type co-occurrence

Some mechanism and harm-type pairings appear more often than the corpus baseline

A raw mechanism-by-type crosstab mostly repeats the size distribution above: child abuse is 45% of the corpus, so it appears often across mechanism rows. Lift is observed ÷ expected, where expected assumes a mechanism's records have the same harm-type distribution as the corpus overall. Values above or below 1.0 describe departures from that internal baseline. They do not show a mechanism's purpose, causal effect or population prevalence.

Mechanism-type pairings that depart most from their expected countA diverging bar chart on a log scale centred at lift = 1 (no difference from the corpus baseline). Bars extending right show a mechanism-type pairing occurring more often than expected; bars extending left show one occurring less often than expected. Every bar is labelled with its lift multiple and its record count n. Only pairings resting on at least 5 records are shown. Full figures follow in the accompanying data table.1× (expected) Violent occult ideology or sacrifice × Ritual murder 17.9× n=8 Curse or witchcraft threat × Fraud 8.0× n=87 Prosperity, divination, or curse-removal claim × Fraud 8.0× n=52 Curse or witchcraft threat × Child abuse 0.1× n=7 Ritual, oath, or initiation × Ritual murder 5.2× n=12 Violent occult ideology or sacrifice × Death 5.2× n=5 Spiritual healing or treatment × Child abuse 0.2× n=19 Other spiritual authority or belief × Trafficking 3.6× n=5 Spiritual healing or treatment × Fraud 3.6× n=63 Ritual, oath, or initiation × Trafficking 3.5× n=8 Prophecy or divine command × Death 3.3× n=9 Institutional obedience or isolation × Institutional abuse 3.2× n=17 Exorcism or deliverance × Death 3.0× n=7 Prosperity, divination, or curse-removal claim × Sexual abuse 0.3× n=8 Pastoral or clerical authority × Death 0.4× n=11 Exorcism or deliverance × Child abuse 0.4× n=8 Sacred sex, purity, or sexual-energy claim × Child abuse 0.4× n=6 Threatened spiritual consequence × Death 2.4× n=10 Sacred sex, purity, or sexual-energy claim × Sexual abuse 2.3× n=26 Spiritual healing or treatment × Death 2.3× n=22 Institutional obedience or isolation × Physical abuse 2.1× n=11 Pastoral or clerical authority × Physical abuse 0.5× n=5 Other spiritual authority or belief × Death 2.0× n=6 Curse or witchcraft threat × Sexual abuse 0.5× n=21 Prosperity, divination, or curse-removal claim × Death 1.7× n=6 Threatened spiritual consequence × Child abuse 0.6× n=24 Exorcism or deliverance × Sexual abuse 1.6× n=26 Ritual, oath, or initiation × Death 1.6× n=8 Threatened spiritual consequence × Sexual abuse 1.6× n=45 Other spiritual authority or belief × Child abuse 0.6× n=18
  • Over-represented (lift > 1)
  • Under-represented (lift < 1)
Table: mechanism-type lift, all pairings at or above 5 records
Observed versus expected record count for each mechanism-type pairing with n ≥ 5. Expected assumes the mechanism's records distribute across types exactly as the corpus overall does. Lift = observed ÷ expected. Denominator for each mechanism's expected count is that mechanism's own record count; type shares are corpus-wide.
Mechanism Type n Expected Lift
Violent occult ideology or sacrifice Ritual murder 8 0.4 17.87×
Curse or witchcraft threat Fraud 87 10.9 7.97×
Prosperity, divination, or curse-removal claim Fraud 52 6.5 7.96×
Curse or witchcraft threat Child abuse 7 54.7 0.13×
Ritual, oath, or initiation Ritual murder 12 2.3 5.21×
Violent occult ideology or sacrifice Death 5 1.0 5.17×
Spiritual healing or treatment Child abuse 19 88.4 0.22×
Other spiritual authority or belief Trafficking 5 1.4 3.60×
Spiritual healing or treatment Fraud 63 17.6 3.57×
Ritual, oath, or initiation Trafficking 8 2.3 3.47×
Prophecy or divine command Death 9 2.8 3.27×
Institutional obedience or isolation Institutional abuse 17 5.2 3.25×
Exorcism or deliverance Death 7 2.3 3.02×
Prosperity, divination, or curse-removal claim Sexual abuse 8 24.1 0.33×
Pastoral or clerical authority Death 11 30.6 0.36×
Exorcism or deliverance Child abuse 8 21.5 0.37×
Sacred sex, purity, or sexual-energy claim Child abuse 6 15.2 0.39×
Threatened spiritual consequence Death 10 4.3 2.35×
Sacred sex, purity, or sexual-energy claim Sexual abuse 26 11.2 2.32×
Spiritual healing or treatment Death 22 9.5 2.31×
Institutional obedience or isolation Physical abuse 11 5.2 2.10×
Pastoral or clerical authority Physical abuse 5 10.2 0.49×
Other spiritual authority or belief Death 6 3.0 2.00×
Curse or witchcraft threat Sexual abuse 21 40.2 0.52×
Prosperity, divination, or curse-removal claim Death 6 3.5 1.70×
Threatened spiritual consequence Child abuse 24 39.5 0.61×
Exorcism or deliverance Sexual abuse 26 15.8 1.64×
Ritual, oath, or initiation Death 8 5.0 1.61×
Threatened spiritual consequence Sexual abuse 45 29.0 1.55×
Other spiritual authority or belief Child abuse 18 27.8 0.65×

Formula: lift = observed ÷ expected, where expected = (mechanism's record count) × (that type's share of all 1,117 core records), i.e. the count expected if the mechanism's harm types were distributed like the corpus overall. Every cell shown rests on at least 5 observed records; n is printed alongside every value. This is co-occurrence within included records, not a causal or prevalence claim, and every count is a record count, not a victim count.

Sentencing

A sentence is stated in the record for 38% of core cases — and most of the time it is not

Of 1,117 core records, 65 state an explicit life sentence, 354 state a numeric custodial term, and 698 state no sentence at all in the text this archive could source. That leaves 419 of 1,117 records (38%) with any sentencing information whatsoever. The 698 "not stated" is itself a finding, not a gap to be filled: it describes what court and press reporting actually captures for a case, not what any court necessarily imposed.

This page does not chart a median or mean sentence length. A prior analysis pass confirmed the 354 numeric terms are not normalizable into a single comparable figure: the free text mixes concurrent terms, cumulative terms stacked across separate counts, and open-ended "X years to life" phrasing, drawn from jurisdictions with incompatible sentencing regimes — one parse of the underlying text reached 658 years on a single record, which is a real quotation, not a usable statistic. Inventing an average from numbers that are not on a common scale would manufacture a precision the source text does not have, so none is shown. What survives as a defensible chart is the three-way split above, and a binary — whether a life sentence was named at all — below.

Sentencing information stated in the record, by categoryA bar chart with three rows: records stating a life sentence, records stating a numeric custodial term, and records stating no sentence at all. Denominator is 1,117 core records. Full figures follow in the accompanying data table. Life sentence stated 65 (6%) Numeric term stated 354 (32%) No sentence stated 698 (62%)
Table: sentencing information stated, and life sentences by mechanism and type
Three-way split of sentencing information stated in the record. Denominator is 1,117 core records.
Category Records (n) Share of core records
Life sentence stated 65 5.8%
Numeric term stated 354 31.7%
No sentence stated 698 62.5%
Share of each mechanism's own records stating an explicit life sentence. Denominator for each row is that mechanism's own record count (not the 419-record stated-sentence subsample). Rows below 5 life-sentence records are omitted.
Mechanism Records (n) Life sentences Life-sentence rate
Violent occult ideology or sacrifice 20 5 25.0%
Prophecy or divine command 57 11 19.3%
Exorcism or deliverance 48 6 12.5%
Other spiritual authority or belief 62 6 9.7%
Guru or spiritual-teacher authority 187 16 8.6%
Threatened spiritual consequence 88 7 8.0%
Ritual, oath, or initiation 103 6 5.8%
Spiritual healing or treatment 197 11 5.6%
Pastoral or clerical authority 632 34 5.4%
Institutional obedience or isolation 325 9 2.8%
Share of each recorded harm type's own records stating an explicit life sentence. Denominator for each row is that type's own record count. Rows below 5 life-sentence records are omitted.
Harm type Records (n) Life sentences Life-sentence rate
Death 54 14 25.9%
Sexual abuse 368 23 6.3%
Child abuse 501 24 4.8%

The three-way split's denominator is 1,117 core records. Every other sentencing figure on this page — the 419-record stated-sentence subsample and the 38% figure above — is of the 419 records where a sentence is stated, never of the full 1,117. Life-sentence rate by mechanism and by type is a binary (was a life sentence named, yes or no) rather than a parsed year count, because a binary phrase match is far more robust at n=65 than any arithmetic on incomparable free text. Cells resting on fewer than 5 life-sentence records are omitted from both tables, consistent with the suppression rule used throughout this page.

The limits

This corpus cannot tell you whether abuse is rising

85% of all core records fall in the 2010s and 2020s. Plotted on a time axis that looks like a steep and alarming increase. It is not a finding. It is the shape of what a research project working today can locate, verify and source: court records digitise, press archives survive unevenly, limitation periods expire, and the further back you look the less there is to find. The chart below is therefore labelled as what it actually measures — this archive's research coverage — and no mechanism is drawn as a count over time anywhere on this page.

This chart is wider than the screen and starts scrolled to the decades holding the most records. Scroll horizontally to see earlier decades, or use the data table below instead.
Records held by decade of prosecution, with contextual documentation markersA bar chart of how many core records this archive holds for each decade, positioned on a continuous year axis so gaps between decades are preserved. Dashed vertical lines mark selected legal or documentation events for context; the chart does not estimate their effects. It describes archive coverage, not the frequency of abuse. Full figures and the event list follow in the accompanying data table. 0 145 291 436 581 1810 1920 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020 1974 US CAPTA reporting law 1985 Gauthe clergy prosecution 2002 Boston Globe Spotlight 2009 Ireland Ryan Report 2013 Australian Royal Commissi… 2017 #MeToo 2018 PA grand jury; Oba revoke… 2022 Abe killing → Unification…
Table: records held by decade, and events that expanded documentation
Number of core records this archive holds for each decade, by decade of prosecution or official finding. This measures documentation availability and research coverage, not the incidence of abuse. Denominator is 1,117 core records.
Decade Records held Share of corpus
1810s 1 0.1%
1920s 1 0.1%
1940s 5 0.4%
1950s 8 0.7%
1960s 6 0.5%
1970s 4 0.4%
1980s 12 1.1%
1990s 51 4.6%
2000s 83 7.4%
2010s 365 32.7%
2020s 581 52.0%
Selected legal and documentation events marked for context. This chart does not estimate their effects on reporting, prosecution, documentation or underlying events.
Year Event affecting documentation
1974 US CAPTA reporting law
1985 Gauthe clergy prosecution
2002 Boston Globe Spotlight
2009 Ireland Ryan Report
2013 Australian Royal Commission
2017 #MeToo
2018 PA grand jury; Oba revokes juju oaths
2022 Abe killing → Unification Church reckoning

Denominator: 1,117 core records, dated by prosecution or official finding rather than by when the underlying conduct occurred. Markers provide legal and documentation context; the chart does not estimate their effects. The rise may reflect digitization, source access, collection practice or underlying events, and cannot measure incidence. The marker list is Western- and Anglophone-heavy. Read this chart as a description of the archive.

The corpus also drifted as it was assembled

A second sampling artifact sits inside the first. This corpus was built in phases, and as the research strategy shifted the records changed character. Sorted by the order in which they were added, the earliest quartile is 16.5% fatal and 41% pastoral-clerical, while the most recent quartile is 1.8% fatal and 58% pastoral-clerical. The corpus blends two sampling regimes, and any pooled statistic on this page inherits that blend. We disclose it rather than hide it.

Fatal-outcome rate and pastoral-clerical share by collection-order quartile, from earliest-added records to most recent. Denominator for each rate is the quartile's record count.
Collection-order quartile Records Fatal rate Pastoral-clerical share
Q1 (earliest added) 279 16.5% 40.5%
Q2 279 2.9% 63.4%
Q3 279 7.2% 64.5%
Q4 (most recent) 280 1.8% 57.9%

Denominator: 1,117 core records split into four equal groups by addition order. The quartiles show collection-order drift, but this page does not isolate the effect of decade, research strategy or other causes. A court-established victim-count band per record would allow victim-weighted views alongside the case-weighted ones shown here; it is not estimated from the current free text.

A descriptive view of the recorded mix across decades

Normalizing each decade to 100% shows the mechanism mix within the records available for that decade. It does not remove coverage bias, selection effects or changes in coding practice. Decades holding fewer than 5 records are omitted.

This chart is wider than the screen. Scroll horizontally within it to see every decade, or use the data table below instead.
Mechanism mix within each decade, normalized to 100 percentA one hundred percent stacked bar chart. Each decade's column is divided into bands showing what share of that decade's mechanism mentions each mechanism accounts for. Because every column sums to the same height, this shows composition and deliberately conveys nothing about volume. Full figures follow in the accompanying data table. 100% 75% 50% 25% 0% 100 1940s n=5 50 50 1950s n=8 56 44 1980s n=12 35 29 13 16 1990s n=51 40 24 19 2000s n=83 27 16 12 11 26 2010s n=365 35 15 25 2020s n=581
  • Pastoral or clerical authority
  • Institutional obedience or isolation
  • Spiritual healing or treatment
  • Guru or spiritual-teacher authority
  • Curse or witchcraft threat
  • All other mechanisms
Table: mechanism mix by decade
Share of each decade's mechanism mentions accounted for by each mechanism, normalized to 100% within the decade. The denominator is mechanism mentions, not records, because a record may name several mechanisms. Decades holding fewer than 5 records are excluded.
Decade Records Mentions Pastoral or clerical authorityInstitutional obedience or isolationSpiritual healing or treatmentGuru or spiritual-teacher authorityCurse or witchcraft threatAll other mechanisms
1940s 5 5 100.0% (5)0.0% (0)0.0% (0)0.0% (0)0.0% (0)0.0% (0)
1950s 8 10 50.0% (5)50.0% (5)0.0% (0)0.0% (0)0.0% (0)0.0% (0)
1980s 12 16 56.3% (9)43.8% (7)0.0% (0)0.0% (0)0.0% (0)0.0% (0)
1990s 51 69 34.8% (24)29.0% (20)7.2% (5)13.0% (9)0.0% (0)15.9% (11)
2000s 83 134 39.6% (53)23.9% (32)8.2% (11)5.2% (7)3.7% (5)19.4% (26)
2010s 365 674 27.3% (184)15.7% (106)11.9% (80)8.3% (56)11.1% (75)25.7% (173)
2020s 581 991 35.1% (348)14.6% (145)10.0% (99)10.9% (108)4.1% (41)25.2% (250)

Denominator: mechanism mentions within each decade, normalized to 100%. Column heights are deliberately equal — this chart carries no information about volume, and none should be inferred from it. Decade totals are printed beneath each column so the thinness of the early decades stays visible.

Check it yourself

Dimensions and metrics explorer

Pick a dimension and a metric. Cells resting on fewer than 5 records are suppressed, never shown as a small number. This table renders fully without JavaScript; the controls change which slice it shows.

Showing Count by Tradition: 22 rows, of which 7 are suppressed for resting on fewer than 5 records.

Count by Tradition, across 1,117 core records. Rows resting on fewer than 5 records are marked suppressed.
Tradition Count
christian 643
islam 98
divination-fraud 85
spiritual-healing 65
nrm 58
buddhism 34
judaism 28
hinduism 22
juju 17
afro-brazilian 12
indigenous-spiritual 11
new-age 9
muti 8
santeria 6
western-occult 5
palo < 5 (suppressed)
haitian-vodou < 5 (suppressed)
sikhism < 5 (suppressed)
left-hand-path < 5 (suppressed)
jainism < 5 (suppressed)
fraternal < 5 (suppressed)
northern-traditional < 5 (suppressed)

Findings

What the corpus supports

Mechanism categories vary in cross-tradition spread

Of 14 pretext categories, 10 classify as structural (spread evenly across many traditions) and 4 as tradition-bound, using the crossTraditionIndex >= 0.6 and distinctTraditions >= 5 rule.

n = 1,965 of 14 pretext categories

Caveat: The structural and tradition-bound labels are project classifications based on stated thresholds. They do not estimate prevalence within any tradition.

Recorded mechanism mix differs between early and recent records

Comparing records from decades 1810s-1970s (n=25) against 1980s-2020s (n=1092), the pretext category with the largest share shift is institutional-obedience (60% -> 28.4% of records in each period).

25 early-period core records vs 1092 late-period core records

Caveat: The early period contains few records. Differences may reflect source access, collection order, coding practice or underlying events; this comparison does not isolate a cause.

Available case documentation is concentrated by country

The top 5 countries by core-record count (United States, Russia, United Kingdom, Canada, India) account for 502 of 1117 geolocated core records (44.9%).

n = 502 of 1,117 core records

Caveat: Country counts reflect source access, language and court-reporting systems as well as the records found. They do not estimate national prevalence or risk.

Data source: published analysis files. All figures are based on 1,117 core records. See Method for full inclusion criteria.