Lawsuit Accuses Liberty University of Inadequately Addressing Rape Complaint
A Washington, D.C.-area law firm has filed a complaint in a Virginia District Court alleging Liberty University failed to properly investigate a student’s report that she was raped by another student and retaliated against her after she made the report.
The lawsuit, filed by Joseph, Greenwald & Laake, P.A. on behalf of a Jane Doe client, says the Lynchburg, Virginia-based evangelical Christian school also failed to provide accommodations to the victim for her emotional, physical, and psychological suffering in the wake of the assault.
The suit says that on April 27, 2021, Doe, then a Liberty University student, was sexually assaulted by a fellow Liberty student at an off-campus student apartment building.
It alleges that although Liberty administrators were promptly notified of the incident, the university failed to take any action or enact protective measures in response, and that the school’s administration retaliated against the alleged victim, accusing her of violating the school’s code of student conduct, known as the “Liberty Way.”
Doe said she lived in regular fear of encountering her assailant on and around campus, and dealt with daily mental, emotional, and psychological trauma. Erika Jacobsen White, principal at Joseph Greenwald & Laake and counsel for Jane Doe, said the school allowed Doe’s alleged assailant to continue to harass her on campus, and even assigned him to the same housing complex.
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Doe was also targeted for associating with other students who were allegedly drinking, White said.
“Liberty’s treatment of Jane Doe is emblematic of the kinds of institutional barriers that sexual assault survivors regularly face in getting justice,” White said. “Instead of ensuring Jane Doe’s safety, Liberty engaged in classic victim-blaming, compounding her trauma.”
Jane Doe eventually left Liberty.
Liberty’s treatment of sexual assault victims has already been under scrutiny. In July of 2021, 12 women filed a lawsuit detailing what it called the “weaponization” of the Liberty Way that made it “difficult or impossible” for students to report sexual violence. The suit said violence, particularly by male student athletes, was excused while the women who reported it faced retaliation, and that the school had “intentionally created a campus environment” that made sexual assaults and rapes more likely to occur.
