New public database documents 1,030 court-verified cases of abuse enabled by religious authority

Bound by Fear (boundbyfear.com), a public archive of abuse enabled by religious and spiritual authority, is now available with a free public API and bulk data downloads.

The archive holds 1,292 records taken from court judgments, charging documents, official inquiries and regulatory findings, spanning 1819 to 2026. Of these, 1,030 meet a published inclusion test, and 95% of those record criminal convictions. The archive cites and individually logs 2,256 sources.

One rule applies across every tradition: a record qualifies when the victim was subject to the perpetrator's spiritual authority, and that authority is what made the harm possible or impossible to refuse. Religious persecution, where an accuser holds no authority over the victim, is documented separately, because the relationship runs the other way. Convictions overturned on appeal are excluded by name.

Christian institutions account for 786 of the records, followed by Islamic (110), new religious movements (69), Buddhist (42) and Jewish (34). The archive's case is that the mechanism holds constant across traditions, with authority making refusal impossible.

The archive documents its own limits. It is a convenience sample recording where abuse was investigated, prosecuted and reported in a citable form, which is a narrower thing than a measure of where abuse occurs. Country figures come from a free-text location field and are approximate. Both caveats are stated in the coverage notes.

Data is available as JSON and CSV at boundbyfear.com/data, and through a versioned read-only API at boundbyfear.com/api, with an OpenAPI 3.1 specification and a published codebook. No account or key is required. A corrections and right-of-reply process is at boundbyfear.com/corrections, and classification changes are dated in the changelog.

Bound by Fear is published by Ultraculture Incorporated. Editor: Jason Louv.