Liberty University has agreed to pay an unprecedented $14 million fine for the Christian school’s failure to release information about crimes on its campus and its treatment of sexual assault survivors, the U.S. Department of Education announced Tuesday .
The fine is by far the largest ever imposed under the Clery Act, a law that requires colleges and universities that receive federal funding to collect data on campus crime and notify students of threats. Schools must distribute an annual safety report that includes crime reports and information about efforts to improve campus safety.
Liberty has for years marketed itself as one of the safest campuses in the country, with more than 15,000 students at the school in Lynchburg, Virginia. But the police department had a single officer with minimal oversight to investigate crimes for most of the period reviewed by federal investigators, from 2016 to 2023.
The U.S. Department of Education said it has identified numerous cases that resulted in the misclassification or underreporting of crimes. And there were several incidents that the university determined were unfounded without evidence that the original report was false.
“This was especially common in sexual crimes, including cases of rape and fondling,” the plea agreement said.
Federal investigators cited a case in which a woman reported being raped and the attacker told her he had a knife, according to the plea agreement.
Liberty’s investigator “debunked this case based on the claim that the ‘victim indicated that she consented to the sexual act,'” the agreement said. “In fact, the victim’s own statement merely indicated that she ‘gave in’ in an attempt to get away from the perpetrator.”
Many victims of sex crimes were afraid to report crimes because they feared reprisals, the agreement said. Several were punished for violating the student code of conduct known as ‘The Liberty Way,’ while their attackers went unpunished.”
“As a result, victims of sexual assault often felt discouraged by the Liberty government’s reputation for punishing sexual assault survivors rather than helping them,” the agreement said. “Such fears created a culture of silence in which sexual violence typically went unreported.”
The university said in a statement Tuesday that it is “fully committed to maintaining the safety and security of students and staff, without exception.”
The school said it would continue to work with the U.S. Department of Education. And it noted that since 2022, it has made more than $10 million in significant improvements toward compliance with the Clery Act and other laws, including in educational programming, new leadership and staffing.
Liberty also acknowledged past problems, including “inaccurate statistical reporting and necessary timely warnings and emergency notifications that were not sent.” But the university also said the U.S. Department of Education used methods and calculations that “differed dramatically from their historical treatment of other universities.”
“Liberty disagrees with this approach and alleges that we have repeatedly suffered selective and unfair treatment by the department,” the school said.
But Dustin Wahl, co-founder of Save71, an alumni-led organization that advocates for change, said Liberty is trying to shift blame.
“Liberty should apologize to the students who have been harmed over the years and demonstrate their commitment to change,” he said. “Not because they are being dragged along by the government, but because they genuinely want to be transparent and want to solve the problems. .”
Before Tuesday, the largest Clery Act fine in history was $4.5 million against Michigan State in 2019, according to a February report from the Congressional Research Service. Federal investigators said the state of Michigan failed to adequately respond to sexual abuse complaints against Larry Nassar, a campus sports doctor who harassed top gymnasts and other female athletes.
In 2016, Pennsylvania State University was hit with a then-record $2.4 million fine following child sex abuse complaints against former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky.
The $14 million fine against Liberty University appears to be a small portion of its total operating revenues, which amounted to $1.2 billion in fiscal 2022 without donor restrictions, an annual report shows. The school’s net worth was $3.5 billion.
But violations of the Clery Act are “bigger than just the fines,” said Abigail Boyer, associate executive director of the Pennsylvania-based Clery Center, which provides training and assistance to campuses.
“Hand in hand with the fines, institutions are considering how they are now publicly perceived as a campus that does or does not focus on student safety and well-being,” Boyer told The Associated Press.
Liberty has become one of the world’s largest Christian schools since it was co-founded in 1971 by religious broadcaster Jerry Falwell Sr. In 2022, the school said it had reached a record 115,000 students earning degrees online, in addition to more than 15,000 on campus.
The Clery Act investigation became widely known in 2022 in the wake of recent lawsuits over the handling of sexual assault cases.
Lawsuits by former students and employees have accused the school of botching sexual assault reports or failing to investigate rape allegations. The lawsuit was filed under Title IX, the federal law that protects against sex discrimination in education and often overlaps with Clery.
Liberty settled a civil lawsuit filed by 12 women in 2022 after they accused the school of promoting an unsafe environment and mishandling cases of sexual assault and harassment.
The lawsuit stated that the university had a “silent policy” of biasing investigations in favor of accused male students, and that the university retaliated against women who did make such reports.
The terms of the settlement in that lawsuit were not disclosed. But at the time, Liberty outlined a number of changes it was making to improve campus security and assess how it responds to incidents of sexual harassment or violence.
Tuesday’s announcement comes three years after Liberty’s acrimonious split with former President Jerry Falwell Jr., whose departure followed the posting of a provocative photo of himself online and revelations about his wife’s extramarital affair. Falwell and the university have since filed lawsuits against each other over his departure.
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Rankin reported from Richmond, Virginia. Finley reported from Norfolk, Virginia. Associated Press writers Collin Binkley and Moriah Balingit contributed to this report.