Which is worse: That someone leaked a report alleging Liberty University has mishandled and covered up sexual abuse for years, or that Liberty University appears to have mishandled and covered up sexual abuse for years?
According to Liberty President Dondi Costin, the leak is an intentional effort to malign the Baptist school founded by televangelist Jerry Falwell Sr. And according to him and other supporters, this is further evidence of the Biden administration’s attacks on religious conservatives.
Cindy Warren, who is part of an alumni group seeking to hold the university accountable, tweeted Oct. 16 on X: “As one of the people who filed the first Clery Act complaint 18 years ago, I’m gonna go ahead and say this isn’t the government trying to make LU look bad. LU has done an excellent job of that on their own. I was a super Republican when we filed that report btw.”
Also, this general comment tweeted by Save71, the alumni group serving as a watchdog: “Costin assumes that the report leaked from the government, but that may not be true. The report didn’t leak for several months, and then it leaked just a few days after LU’s board received it. Board members have inadvertently leaked information before.”
Dondi Costin
Regardless of who leaked the report or why, the allegations within it are damning on a scale seldom seen in U.S. higher education. The Washington Post broke the story Oct. 3, saying: “Liberty University has failed for years to keep its campus safe and repeatedly violated the federal law that specifies how it should do so, according to preliminary confidential findings from an Education Department inquiry.”
That federal law, called the Clery Act, requires schools that participate in federal financial aid programs — Liberty received $874 million for student loans and grants from the Education Department in 2020-2021 — to disclose crime statistics and other information about campus safety.
According to Costin, Liberty could face fines of up to $37.5 million — an unprecedented penalty.
The Post summarized by saying the report “paints a picture of a university that discouraged people from reporting crimes, underreported the claims it received and, meanwhile, marketed its Virginia campus as one of the safest in the country.”
The draft report also alleges university officials destroyed evidence after a government inquiry began.
The Post quoted S. Daniel Carter, a campus safety consultant who reviewed a copy of the initial report and said: “This is the single most blistering Clery report I have ever read. Ever. … I cannot think of a single other comparable case in the entire 32-year history of the Clery Act.”
Liberty, based in Lynchburg, Va., has grown to become the world’s largest Baptist university. Its roots are in independent Baptist fundamentalism. The vast majority of the school’s 100,000 students are part-timers who study online from around the world, but about 15,000 study on the Virginia campus — still an exceptionally large number for a private Christian school.
University officials contend the draft report from the Department of Education is filled with errors and the allegations are false. The school has hired two outside firms to review its Clery Act compliance and draft a response to the Department of Education.
Among the allegations made in the draft report:
- The school did not properly receive complaints of crimes, produce incident reports, warn the campus of emergencies and threats to safety, advise crime victims of their rights or handle the data needed for crime statistics.
- The school did not enter into the daily crime log “an alleged rape that was committed by a former Liberty president.” Former President Jerry Falwell Jr. responded that definitely was not him.
- Serial abuse perpetuated by a “senior administrator” despite university leaders knowing credible accusations had been made against him.
- Those who reported sexual violence or other incidents “were frequently questioned about their own conduct that may have allegedly contributed” to what happened to them.
- Suggestions for improvement were rejected or ignored by school leaders, and the university police department became complicit in this willful ignorance.
A statement from the university posted online cited new actions it has taken to address the concerns, including creating an Office of Equity and Compliance to ensure Title IX and Clery Act compliance, investments in security equipment, and more training and online resources.