Liberty University penalized $16M tied to Clery Act, culture of fear reporting sexual assault

Liberty University will face a $16 million penalty for creating a culture where students were afraid to report when they suffered sexual violence.

The financial sanction, announced on Tuesday by the U.S. Department of Education, is the largest of its kind.

“Through today’s action against Liberty, we're sending the message that we will hold schools accountable if they fail to follow the important requirements of the Clery Act,” said Richard Cordray, the head of the agency’s Federal Student Aid office.

In addition to a $14 million fine, the Christian university will be required to spend $2 million over the next two years “for on-campus safety improvements and compliance enhancements.” And it will be under federal monitoring through April 2026. The agency conducted its investigation under the Clery Act, a federal law that requires universities to track crimes on their campus and warn students of danger.

USA TODAY obtained a preliminary Education Department report in 2023 that found, “victims of sexual assault felt dissuaded by Liberty administration’s reputation for punishing sexual assault survivors rather than helping them.”

The final report was unsparing about Liberty’s failure to create a safe environment. It cited rules the university developed itself that worked against that, including the Liberty Way – a student code of conduct that punishes drinking, drugs and sexual acts.

“Consequently, victims of sexual assault often felt dissuaded by Liberty administration’s reputation for punishing sexual assault survivors rather than helping them,” the report said. “Such fears created a culture of silence where sexual assaults commonly went unreported.”

Investigation: Feds say Liberty University created 'fear of reprisal' for sexual violence survivors

In a Tuesday release, Liberty said that while it had “endured selective and unfair treatment by the Department, the university also concurs there were numerous deficiencies that existed in the past.” Those errors, it said, included “incorrect statistical reports as well as required timely warnings and emergency notifications that were not sent.”

“We acknowledge and sincerely regret these errors and have since corrected them in a manner that allows us to maintain compliance in each of these areas,” Dondi E. Costin, Liberty’s president, said in a written statement. “Today is a new day at Liberty University. We remain committed to prioritizing the safety and security of our students and staff without exception.”

The university had previously challenged the department’s preliminary findings, saying in an earlier statement that they included “significant errors, misstatements, and unsupported conclusions.”

Costin had said the university was facing a $37.5 million fine – more than double the settled fine.

He also told Fox News in October 2023 that the institution was being unfairly targeted by the federal government. Some House Republicans, including chair of the education committee, Virginia Foxx, North Carolina, similarly questioned earlier this year if the agency was, “targeting religious institutions,” and requested a briefing about its investigation.

The university went so far as to file its own Freedom of Information request seeking similar actions against other institutions. However, in a FAQ referenced in Tuesday’s statement, it acknowledged that the resulting documents “did not in any way show new precedent or a new calculation methodology as had been described to us that we would see.”

The final report found that college officials overlooked and failed to record repeated instances of sexual violence on its campus, and that the school failed to warn students about potential threats. It detailed university officials’ attempts to cover their tracks by seeking help from technology staff to delete hard drives. The allegations even included a former Liberty president accused of rape – an incident that didn’t appear in a daily campus crime log.

The report also referenced a staff member who continued to work at the university despite being accused of sexual misconduct by multiple women. USA TODAY in November identified that man as Keith Anderson, who is listed as the executive director of the student health center and wellness initiatives. The final report notes that federal investigators learned late last year that that Anderson was, “terminated at least in part due to the filing of two new credible complaints of sexual misconduct against him.”

Liberty is one of the nation’s most prominent Christian universities and a mainstay among Republican luminaries. Jerry Falwell, a prominent televangelist and conservative figure, started the school in 1971. Based in Virginia, the university has grown thanks to online students – about 93,000 combined – and it took nearly $880 million in federal financial aid for its students.

The institution’s image as a Christian sanctuary has been challenged in recent years, including by the actions of its own leadership. Jerry Falwell Jr., who took over after his father’s death in 2007 and helped shape it into the massive institution it is today, resigned in 2020 after a sex scandal involving him, his wife and another man.

About two dozen survivors in 2021 filed a lawsuit against Liberty over its role in creating “a campus environment where sexual assaults and rapes are foreseeably more likely to occur.” All but two of those women settled with the Lynchburg, Virginia university in 2022, though the details of that agreement remain private.

Sarah Mays didn’t settle. She said she was intimidated into retracting her report of being attacked by multiple men in 2001. Mays said the university isn’t facing “Christian persecution,” rather it is the students who are suffering as a result because of Liberty’s administration. She told USA TODAY last year that she was skeptical that a financial penalty would have much impact on the school.

“A little fine is not going to make them change their ways,” Mays said. “They can make back any amount of money with a snap of fingers.”

The Education Department often investigates universities’ compliance with Title IX, a federal anti-discrimination gender law meant to protect students from sexual harassment. Universities can lose federal funding if they don’t comply although no university has faced that consequence.

However, the government agency has issued fines to schools in the past for failing to meet provisions of the Clery Act. Among the more notable were a $2.4 million fine to Pennsylvania State University in connection with Jerry Sandusky, a former assistant football coach convicted of molesting multiple children. Previously, the largest-to-date was the $4.5 million penalty Michigan State faced in connection with its handling of sports doctor Larry Nassar and the women he victimized.

S. Daniel Carter, president of the college consulting group Safety Advisors for Educational Campuses and an expert on the Clery Act, said from 2000 to 2023 the federal government issued about $20 million in fines related to Clery investigations.

He was also skeptical about claims that the investigation or fine were tied to Liberty’s religious affiliation. Instead, he said, the size of the fine more likely reflects the institution’s substantial financial resources. The college’s endowment tops $2 billion – one of the nation’s largest.

Consider Mission University a small private school in Springfield, Missouri that the senior Falwell attended when it was called Baptist Bible College. It was fined $35,000 in January 2023 in connection with a Clery investigation.

Carter also said the allegations raised in the Liberty case are unlike any other he has seen raised.

“The bottom line is that this is an indication that the department is taking enforcement of the sexual misconduct provisions in the Clery Act seriously,” Carter said.

Chris Quintana is a reporter on the USA TODAY investigations team with a background in higher education and student loans. Contact him at cquintana@usatoday.com, @CquintanaDC on Instagram and X, or by Signal at 202-308-9021.   

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Liberty University fined under Clery Act for sexual assault response