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If you had $14 million to spend, what would you spend it on? Maybe you’d put it towards saving the world in some respect, or ensuring that you and everyone you care about would be secure for the rest of your lives or, you know, shoes and handbags (what?). You might choose to spend it on a lot of things, but probably not on “covering up campus sexual assault.”
But that is exactly what Liberty University is about to spend it on, in a roundabout way. The far-right hyper-Christian college founded by Jerry Falwell and headed by his son Jerry Falwell Jr. right up until he was kicked out following a scandal involving his fondness for watching his wife get plowed by a pool boy has agreed to pay a $14 million fine incurred for what the Education Department has deemed a “systemic and persistent” habit of violating federal laws on campus safety.
Specifically, the school violated the Clery Act, which requires schools that receive federal funding through financial aid programs to keep a crime log of incidents occurring within the last 60 days available to students, to issue timely safety warnings when crimes may represent a threat to students or faculty and, as of 2012, keep a record of the school’s crime statistics going back eight years — including statistics on crimes that were reported but deemed “unfounded” by the school’s faculty. Because we all know how that can go.
The law, enacted in 1990, was named for Jeanne Clery, a student who was raped and murdered at Lehigh University in 1986. The point of it is to notify students and faculty of potential dangers they face on campus in hopes of preventing them from becoming victims, but it doesn’t work so well when these crimes are swept under the rug.
This is the largest fine ever issued for a violation of the Clery Act, and if you’re wondering just how bad it really is — the previous record was set by Michigan State University, which was fined $4.5 million for its failure to respond to the accusations against serial child gymnast molester and convicted sex-offender Larry Nassar. Prior to that, the record was held by Penn State for its conduct regarding former assistant football coach/serial child molester Jerry Sandusky.
In Liberty’s case it wasn’t just one incident, but an ongoing pattern of incidents from 2016 to 2023. This follows a 2022 lawsuit from former female Liberty students regarding the school’s mishandling of sexual assault allegations and the fact that the women themselves were the ones who got in trouble after reporting sexual assault, should something they had done in the course of being assaulted violate the school’s honor code, called the “Liberty Way.” Yeah.
The report is more than 100 pages long and includes a number of disturbing incidents that the school did not think were important enough for anyone to know about, including bomb threats, the attempted kidnapping of a 14-year-old girl and multiple instances of sexual assault, stalking, and other disturbing crimes. Particularly unsettling is the story of a football player who managed to stay on campus (and play football!) through multiple allegations of sexual assault and stalking and an actual stalking conviction. Also the story of how the university deemed a report of rape “unfounded” because the victim “consented” after being threatened with a knife.
And incidents like this:
On October 13, 2013, Employee A showed up at one of his employee’s houses and gave the woman what he referred to as “medicine,” which caused her to fall asleep. When the woman woke up, Employee A was kissing her.
There were multiple reports of sexual harassment over several years against that particular employee, but instead of holding him accountable or warning students and faculty about the threat he posed … they gave him a promotion.
The Education Department ultimately found that during the period of 2016-2023, 93 percent of crimes that should have been logged were either deficient or missing.
In addition to the $14 million fine, Liberty will also be required to spend $2 million on improving its campus safety situation.
But hey! At least the parents of these students will be able to sleep easy at night knowing that, while their children might not have been aware of potential threats to their safety like bomb threats, kidnappings, or sexual assault, the likelihood of them witnessing a drag queen read Goodnight Moon was practically nil.
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