Orientation Materials Provided to Adjudicators. Adjudicators will be supplied with orientation materials on the residential school system and its operations, as well as on child abuse and its impacts. If any of the orientation materials are specifically identified as containing uncontested facts or opinions, they may be used as follows: Adjudicators are expected to inform themselves from this material. They may use it to question witnesses, but also to make findings of fact and to support inferences from evidence they find credible, for example to conclude that trauma of a certain kind can be expected to flow from a sexual assault on a child. These latter uses of this information are justified by the fact that representatives of all interests have agreed to its inclusion in the orientation materials for this use, and all participants in a hearing will have access to the orientation materials. Wherever possible the adjudicator should use the information at the hearing to formulate questions to any witnesses who may be able to comment on it, or whose testimony it may contradict, support, or help explain. Where this is not possible, the proposed use in reaching a decision should be identified to the parties at the hearing to give them a chance to comment on it in their submissions, but so doing is not a condition precedent to the proposed use. Where the material is used in coming to a finding of fact, or drawing an inference, it should be cited and its relevance and the rationale for its use set out in the decision. Where orientation information provided to adjudicators does not represent uncontested facts or opinions, it may be used by adjudicators as follows: Adjudicators may use this category of orientation materials as a basis for questioning witnesses, or testing the evidence, but may not rely on it as an independent basis for their conclusions of fact or their assessment of the actual impact of abuse on an individual.
