March 5 (Reuters) – Liberty University, founded by Christian televangelist and conservative activist Jerry Falwell, was ordered to pay a record $14 million fine for breaking a federal law requiring schools to report sexual assaults and other campus crimes, the U.S. Education Department said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Christian school has become enmeshed in multiple controversies in recent years. In 2021, the university sued<\/u><\/a> 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n