About POSWatch

POSWatch is a public registry documenting clergy, missionaries, and preachers whose public ministry has produced harm to a person: coercion, incitement, abuse, or fraud. It exists to keep a durable, verifiable record where institutions have failed to keep one. Defense and record, not vengeance.

We do not adjudicate faith. We do not police belief. Every entry must document harm to a person by someone holding a religious authority role in a public ministry. Theological disagreement, private belief, and abstract doctrine are out of scope. The full rules are in the Charter.

How it works

Every allegation follows the same path, and nothing skips a step:

1. File. Anyone can file at /report against a named subject in a named category, with primary-source evidence attached. No Membership account is required. A small anti-spam filing fee gates automated abuse.
2. Swear. A sworn filing carries full weight. The declarant attests under oath, and perjury statutes apply where the underlying conduct occurred. An anonymous tip is accepted but carries reduced weight (25%).
3. Evidence. Each source is a primary document with a citation and, wherever possible, a direct quote and an archived URL. Paraphrase alone does not qualify.
4. Admin review. A moderator checks the filing against the Charter's harm-to-person standard and evidentiary floor before anything is public. Filings that fail the floor are not published.
5. Published. Approved entries appear on the public registry, browsable and mappable, with their evidence visible.
6. Sealed. The filing, its approval, and every later change are hash-chained to an append-only NDJSON ledger, SHA-256-canonicalized, and OpenTimestamp-anchored to Bitcoin. The record is tamper-evident and independently verifiable at /verify.
7. Right of reply. The named subject, their organization, family, or counsel may attach a rebuttal to the entry. Entry and rebuttal are shown together. There is no silent deletion.

Why it is hard to fake

Evidence standard

A filing is not an accusation shouted into the void. To pass review it must clear an evidentiary floor:

• Primary source required: recorded sermon, court filing, criminal record, grand-jury or inquiry report, regulatory finding, news report with named sources, organizational document, or published writing.
• Direct quote, not paraphrase, for anything attributed to the subject.
• Citation required: case number, outlet plus date, or document title plus date.
• An archived URL wherever the source is online, so it survives link rot.
• Submitter attestation under a sworn filing, or an anonymous tip carried at reduced weight.
• The doctrine-vs-incitement line: abstract doctrine is out; a named target plus a call to action is in.

The same methodology applies across all faiths. A transparent standard lets any tradition challenge selective targeting on the merits rather than by assertion.

Corrections & takedown

If you are named in an entry, or believe an entry is wrong, there are two paths:

• Right of reply. The named subject, their organization, family, or legal counsel may submit a rebuttal directly on the entry page. The same evidentiary rules apply to a rebuttal as to the original filing. The engine then displays the entry and the rebuttal together, permanently. This is the primary remedy: the answer to disputed speech is more speech, on the record.
• Correction request. To fix a factual error, remove a duplicate, or flag a filing that fails the Charter, write to [email protected] with the entry's filing reference and the specific defect. We correct verifiable errors. We do not silently delete accurate, sourced records. Because the ledger is append-only, a withdrawal is recorded as a counter-entry rather than an erasure, so the history stays honest.

See also the Terms of Use, Privacy, and Contact pages.