“I feel the Lord moving here,” remarks a visitor looking over Liberty University’s Disney World-tidy campus toward the foothills of the Blue Ridge mountains in Virginia.
But other, more temporal matters, none godly, now hang over the once powerful evangelical institution founded in 1971 by the television preacher Jerry Falwell Sr, the Baptist minister who, eight years later, created the Moral Majority that mobilized the Christian right to the services of the Republican party.
For decades Liberty has been a power-broker on the right of American politics and a bulwark of social conservatism but a succession of scandals now threatens a university that requires that students follow The Liberty Way, a student honor code that prohibits sexual relations outside of “a biblically-ordained marriage between a natural-born man and a natural-born woman”.
But last week saw the termination of Liberty’s spokesman who had stood up for 22 female students represented in a lawsuit that claims the university “enabled on-campus rapes” and suppressed complaints of sexual assault and rape, a violation of federal Title IX statutes, in what it said was “the weaponization of the ‘Liberty Way’”.
Scott Lamb claimed in a separate action filed last week that he was unlawfully fired from his position as spokesman after participating in several interviews conducted by an outside law firm hired by the university to investigate the handling of student sexual assault allegations.
The women’s claims came to light over the summer a year after Jerry Falwell Jr, son of the founder, was forced to step down as president of the university after he posted an Instagram photo of himself standing with his trousers unzipped and an arm around a young woman.
That comes after Giancarlo Granda, a Florida pool attendant, claimed that he had a six-year relationship with Falwell’s wife, Becki, that involved having sex while Falwell watched. Falwell, an outspoken ally of Donald Trump, “was aware from day one of our relationship, and he did in fact watch”, Granda later told ABC News.
But, despite the lurid details of the Falwells’ marriage, it is the latest scandal to hit Liberty that may prove to be the most consequential. Liberty’s new president, Jerry Prevo, a 76-year-old retired pastor of a large Alaskan church, released a statement to the campus community saying the college would not tolerate “Title IX violations, sexual abuse or sexual assault in any form at any time”.
Mixed into this toxic stew, Lamb provided Politico with recordings of Prevo saying he wanted the university’s internal thinktank – the Standing for Freedom Center – to become more effective at political activity, including influencing elections, a potential violation of the university’s non-taxable charity status.
A Liberty University spokesperson responded, saying Prevo “knows the lines established by the IRS for political engagement of 501(c)(3) organizations, even if Scott Lamb does not” and pointed to guidelines stating that the university can get behind certain causes, but not individual candidates.
In the nearby Virginia city of Lynchburg, some doubted that. A lifelong resident said the university had grown in regional political influence, encouraging students to obtain voting waivers to register in national and state elections.
On Tuesday, Virginia voters will elect a new governor, a contest of national political importance, with polls suggesting the Republican candidate, Glenn Youngkin, could win in the state that Joe Biden won by 10 points just a year ago.
But on campus, the interjection of Lamb in the scandal has angered some women who say their claims of sexual assault were ignored in the first instance and are now being overshadowed in a legal showdown between a male-dominated institution and a male former spokesperson.
A 20-year-old student, identified as “Jane 16” in court papers, told the Guardian that she was raped by a member of the college football team in February. The woman, who has since left the university as a result of her experience, said her assailant remains on the team.
After the assault, she went for an anonymous forensic examination at Lynchburg-area hospital and then went to the university’s Title IX office to report the incident, ultimately doing so in April. A formal seven-hour Title IX hearing took place last month.
But the university’s response to Jane 16’s claim was to find her alleged assailant not responsible. “That was just totally biased,” she says. “Because he’s on the football team, he walked away with zero punishment. The most shocking part is that I’m not the only woman who has come forward against him specifically.”
Jane 16, who has appealed against the university’s decision last month but has yet to receive a response, says she felt the university employee she spoke to was transferring responsibility for her assault with the implications of purity culture that women are responsible for, and mitigating, the desires of men.
“When they asked me if I was in a room alone with him, they asked if I knew that’s against the Liberty Way? During my hearing they asked him what I was wearing that night,” she says.
“It felt very victim-blaming. The question implies that what were you wearing might have been inviting some sort of sexual action,” Jane 16 added. Another victim, Jane 18, had a similar experience “and I’m pretty sure there are others”, she said.
This is not the first time such a scandal has engulfed the college.
In 2000, a 15-year-old reported being sexually assaulted at a Liberty camp by Jesse Matthew Jr, an LU football player at the time, after which Liberty allegedly threatened to charge the teen – Jane Doe 12 – with having filed a false report. Matthew went on to murder two women, Morgan Harrington in 2009 and Hannah Graham in 2014. He is currently serving a life sentence.
A further 10 women, who had either have been students, employees or attendees of LU programs, told ProPublica they chose not to report their rapes to campus officials because they were concerned about being punished.
Another student, Diane Stargel, came forward to claim that after she was raped by another student at a party off-campus, a counsellor asked her to sign a “victim notice” but warned her she could be found to have broken the Liberty Way. Stargel did not formally report being assaulted.
“I loved Liberty and now I feel that I can’t trust them to give me justice,” Jane 16 confirmed. “The Liberty Way made me scared to report.”
But students at the college, given the institution’s emphasis on “the way”, have not demonstrated against Liberty’s handling of the accusations and many on campus declined to discuss the issue.
Josie Young, a spokesperson with Justice for Janes, a Liberty campus reform group, said a third party should be called in to investigate the university’s HR and Title IX offices for potential areas of corruption and mismanagement. Young said a temporary student group looking into Title IX issues had been shut down.
“A lot of people think that this is a new thing, but it’s not. Assaults on campus have been covered up for years.” Support for the group, Young added, mostly comes from female students. “A lot of the male students think this is a female issue, but it’s not. It’s an issue that affects everybody.”
A university spokesperson told the Guardian: “Liberty University prefers not to issue public comment on litigation, but the university would like to affirm its commitment to take all allegations of sexual assault seriously and in accordance with the law.”
Daniel Harris, a student as well as founder-organizer with the Janes group, said he remained deeply disturbed that the women’s claims had not been given careful attention by a university that claims to hold itself to a higher moral standard.
Falwell Jr, Harris recalls, was known to change his clothes at convocations in full view of the student body, and doing pelvic thrust exercises or “liking” bikini-wearing co-eds on social media. “A lot of students didn’t like it and thought it was unprofessional.”
The Falwell scandal, coupled with two dozen women claiming their sexual assault, has altered Liberty’s image. “Having a bulwark in Christian academia is great so long as it adheres to the values it professes,” says Harris. “Liberty is no longer a morally bulletproof institution above critique.”
