Lynchburg, VA: 12 women file suit against Liberty University re: sexual assault & rape

[Laughing]

12 women file multi-plaintiff lawsuit against Liberty University for ‘enabling on-campus rapes’, LU releases statement | KSNF/KODE - FourStatesHomepage.com

According to the lawsuit — which was filed on Tuesday, July 20 against Liberty University, Inc. in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York on behalf of 12 Jane Does — the university created an unsafe campus environment in the following three ways:

• The creation and weaponization of “the Liberty Way,” a student honor code which makes it either difficult or impossible for students to report sexual violence.
• The promotion of a widely-observed policy that condoned sexual violence, especially by male student athletes.
• The public and repeated retaliation against women who reported being victims of sexual violence.

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[realanastasia]

Good for these brave young women. Liberty is well-known for having an extremely conservative (political and religious) culture* and it would not surprise me if their response to sexual assaults against women laid most of the blame at the feet of the victimized women themselves. It reminds me of an article I read about sexual assault at a similarly-conservative institution of higher education:
Bob Jones University Blamed Victims of Sexual Assaults, Not Abusers, Report Says (Published 2014)

*I am not saying that all people who subscribe to these belief systems are dismissive of victims’ claims of sexual abuse or engage in victim-blaming but these schools definitely seem to have that attitude.