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The department issued the fine, the largest ever levied under
the Clery Act, alongside a 108-page report that detailed how the
Lynchburg, Virginia, school had repeatedly misclassified and
failed to disclose crimes on campus between 2016 and 2023.
Federal investigators also found that the school had prematurely
dismissed as unfounded several allegations of sexual offenses,
"including rape and fondling cases," inhibiting some victims
from reporting them to the university at all.
Liberty's failures to "meet its agreed-upon regulatory
responsibilities in numerous and serious ways" caused "real harm
to members of the campus community and are indicative of a lack
of institutional control," the report said.
The Christian school has become enmeshed in multiple
controversies in recent years. In 2021, the university sued its
former president, the founder's son, Jerry Falwell Jr., for $30
million in damages for undermining its moral standards by
concealing his wife's affair with a pool attendant who attempted
to extort them.
That year, 12 "Jane Doe" plaintiffs sued Liberty over ongoing
safety concerns and revictimization by the university after
reporting acts of sexual violence, according to the Education
Department report released on Tuesday.
The younger Falwell stepped down from his leadership posts in
2020 after a series of damning reports about his ties to Trump's
convicted lawyer, Michael Cohen, his steering a $1.2 million
piece of university property to his personal trainer, and emails
showing he had for years disparaged students, staff and parents
to Liberty administrators.
The older Falwell, who died in 2007, was a founder of the Moral
Majority, a conservative political lobby group credited with
galvanizing support among evangelists during Republican Ronald
Reagan's successful first campaign for the presidency in 1980.
As a result of the Education Department's findings announced on
Tuesday, Liberty agreed to spend $2 million over the next two
years for on-campus safety improvements and compliance
enhancements that will be audited by an outside firm and
monitored by the department.
Further violations of the federal crime-reporting law "could
jeopardize the terms of the university's participation in the
federal student aid programs or result in other administrative
sanctions," the department warned on Tuesday.
(Reporting by Julia Harte; Editing by Sandra Maler)
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