Liberty University has agreed to pay a record $14 million fine after the Education Department found a “systemic and persistent” failure by the institution to comply with a federal law on campus safety.

The agency’s review found that Liberty did not notify people on campus about emergencies and dangerous situations such as bomb threats, the attempted abduction of a young girl, and people accused of repeated acts of sexual violence. The university did not keep an accurate and complete crime log during the 2016 to 2023 review period, the report found.

In addition to the fine, the private Christian university in Lynchburg, Va., must spend $2 million on campus safety improvements during a two-year post-review monitoring period, the Education Department said.

In the report, which spans more than 100 pages, the Education Department cited multiple violations by Liberty of the federal Clery Act, a decades-old law that requires institutions like Liberty that participate in federal financial aid programs to provide timely reporting of crime statistics and other information about campus safety.

The report paints a portrait of a campus culture that made victims of sexual assault reluctant to speak up about their assaults: “Over the course of this review period, several sexual assault victims were punished for violating the student code of conduct known as ‘The Liberty Way,’ while their assailants were left unpunished.” It noted that Liberty has said it has begun revising its sexual misconduct policy and the Liberty Way to ensure they do not conflict with Clery Act requirements.

“Students, faculty and staff deserve to know that they can be safe and secure in their school communities. We respond aggressively to complaints about campus safety and security,” Richard Cordray, the chief operating officer of the Education Department’s Federal Student Aid office, said Tuesday.

Federal law requires schools to investigate complaints, take action to keep campuses safe and disclose information about crimes. “We will continue to hold schools accountable if they fail to do so,” Cordray said.

A Liberty spokesman said Tuesday in an email that the university “is fully committed to maintaining the safety and security of students and staff without exception.” In a statement, the university said it has made more than $10 million in “significant advancements” since 2022 to ensure compliance with Title IX and the Clery Act.

But the university also alleged that Liberty had “repeatedly endured selective and unfair treatment” by the Education Department, a concern it raised last year after The Washington Post reported on a preliminary confidential report of the Clery review.

“In the report, many of the Department’s methodologies, findings, and calculations were drastically different from their historic treatment of other universities,” a Liberty spokesman said in an emailed statement Tuesday.

Senior department officials on a press call said that the law applies equally to all types of higher education institutions and that they have an intentional investigative process.

More than 95,000 students study at Liberty University at its campus and through its online programs, according to the report, which relied on fall enrollment data. It is one of the most influential Christian universities in the country and frequently draws high-profile speakers to its campus.

Liberty received nearly $880 million for student loans and grants from the Education Department in 2022-2023, meaning it must abide by the Clery Act. Congress passed the act more than 30 years ago in response to the rape and murder of a 19-year-old college student in her Lehigh University dorm.

In 2019, the Education Department levied a $4.5 million fine against Michigan State University – the largest at the time – and required the school to take corrective action after what it called a systemic failure to protect students from sexual abuse. The finding followed an investigation of the school’s handling of reports of sexual violence by Larry Nassar, a doctor formerly employed by the university who treated athletes on the school’s gymnastics team.

The size of Liberty’s fine sends a strong message, experts say.

“It’s an abject, systemic failure to comply with Clery,” said S. Daniel Carter, a campus safety consultant and an expert on the law who previously filed complaints against universities including Liberty while working as a victims advocate. “The documentation that there was systemic failure is substantial.”

Cordray, of the Education Department, said the findings speak to serious and long-standing violations. “The settlement also takes into consideration the current Liberty Administration’s prompt acknowledgment of almost all the violations identified in the program review report, and its demonstrated commitment to remedy them going forward,” he said in a call with reporters.

Liberty University was co-founded by televangelist Jerry Falwell in 1971. After his death in 2007, his son Jerry Falwell Jr. became president. He resigned amid personal scandals in 2020.

Jerry Prevo, who had been the board chair, led as interim president until July, when retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Dondi E. Costin took over.

The release of the Education Department findings come months after The Post reported that a confidential preliminary report asserted that the university had repeatedly violated the Clery Act. Eleven of the 12 findings outlined in the draft were upheld in the final report.

The report released Tuesday did not include an initial finding that the school retaliated against a former senior vice president based in part on that employee’s efforts to ensure Liberty complied with the Clery Act. It was dropped based on further evidence, according to department officials.

The report found that top officials were familiar with credible reports that a senior administrator at Liberty had committed sex offenses involving subordinates. Sexual harassment claims in 2012 and 2013 were followed by an alleged incident in which the man “showed up at one of his employee’s houses and gave the woman what he referred to as ‘medicine,’ which caused her to fall asleep.” When she woke up, he was kissing her.

No warnings were issued to the campus about the alleged incidents. The final report notes that the Education Department learned in November that the man was terminated “at least in part due to the filing of two new credible complaints of sexual misconduct about him.”

The draft obtained by The Post also claimed that Liberty officials destroyed evidence after the government’s inquiry began. In the final review, the department upheld its overall finding that the school did not maintain records that would ensure its compliance with the law. But it noted that Liberty officials had provided credible evidence that police reports were routinely destroyed and that electronic data had been stored in a different way. It concluded that references in the draft “suggesting that the University deleted the data from the hard drive with ill intent is not supported by the current record.”

In a statement on its website last fall, Liberty said that its goal was “full candor and cooperation” with the Education Department’s requests during the Clery review. The school also said it had hired two firms to study the school’s compliance with the law and frame its response. It said the university had previously told the agency about “significant errors, misstatements, and unsupported conclusions in the Department’s preliminary findings.”

“Our request of the Department,” the university statement continued, “has been straightforward – that the University be treated in the same manner as similarly situated institutions, and that the Department treat Liberty fairly in accordance with its established precedent.”

Liberty repeated its concerns in its statement Tuesday.

Meanwhile, in January, several Republican lawmakers raised concerns about the Liberty inquiry. In a letter to Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, Reps. Virginia Foxx (N.C.), James Comer (Ky.) and Bob Good (Va.), who chair three House committees or subcommittees, wrote that the department “seems to be targeting religious institutions through program reviews and fines that greatly exceed established and documented precedent.”

In a statement Tuesday, Foxx said the Biden administration’s “intentional destruction of religious freedom protections is abhorrent. Due process shouldn’t fluctuate based off religious or political backgrounds.”

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