15-year-old reported being sexually assaulted at a Liberty University camp, according to a class action lawsuit, but university police blamed her for violating the “Liberty Way” and needlessly had her strip naked and spread her butt cheeks for a photograph.
The lawsuit, filed Tuesday morning in U.S. District Court for the Eastern of New York, says that during the 2000 incident, Liberty threatened to charge the teenager with filing a false report, made her ride in a police car with her alleged attacker and questioned her without water or food for eight hours — all while failing to properly investigate her alleged attacker: Jesse Matthew, Jr., who went on to murder two college students years later.
In advance of being filed, the lawsuit was provided to ABC13’s Cynthia Beasley, who has been investigating for a year-and-a-half allegations that Liberty University violated Title IX rules, repeatedly threatened victims with honor code violations and downplayed sexual assault allegations.