I know ProPublica isn't for everyone as their investigative reporting articles are always very long, but this expose on Liberty is ridiculous: link
Kind of incredible that Baylor could hire a person like this after what they had been accused of previously.
From the article:
After Axley returned to her dorm, she called the campus police department. One of the officers drove her to the local hospital, where, records show, a nurse documented 15 bruises, welts and lacerations on her arm, face and torso.
Axley wasn’t sure what to do next, but she did know that she wanted the man to “stay away from her,” as she recalled. So when Axley got back to her dorm that Sunday morning, she again told someone at Liberty, her resident adviser.
The RA, Axley said, told her not to report it, saying Axley could be found to have violated the school’s prohibition against drinking and fraternizing with the opposite sex.
Instead, the RA offered to pray with Axley.
“I was really confused,” recalled Axley. “They were making it seem like I had done something wrong.”
Axley didn’t want to pray. She wanted the school to do something about what had happened. “I didn’t want to get fined or punished, but I wasn’t going to let this keep me from reporting my assault.”
The next day, Axley went to the school’s federally mandated office for investigating sexual harassment and violence.
She had prepared.
Axley saved texts from that weekend. “He was all over you,” one concerned friend had written to her. It was “pretty damn weird.”
“I ****ing remember making noise and him covering my mouth oh my god,” Axley texted another friend in the early morning hours. She also took photos of the welts across her chest, multiple lacerations on her right upper arm and a bruised lip.
Instead of considering her evidence, Axley said, Bucci started throwing questions at her: Why had Axley gone to the party? What had she had to drink? How much? “I immediately felt judged,” remembered Axley. (Bucci, who is now a Title IX investigator at Baylor University, declined to comment.)
Then Axley waited. She received email updates saying the school was still looking into her case. After five months, Axley heard from Bucci that Liberty had completed its investigation and a committee was now going to consider the case. Bucci invited Axley to first come to the office and review the file.
Axley went in and looked through the materials. The photos with her injuries, she recalled, were no longer there. Axley said that when she asked what had happened, Bucci told her the photos had been removed because they were too “explicit.”
“I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach,” Axley recalled. “I had been relying on them all these months to take my evidence into account when considering my case, and it wasn’t even in my file.”
A few days later, Axley received another email from the university. It said that as the case was moving ahead for a final decision, Axley needed to sign a document acknowledging that she could be found to have violated the university’s code of conduct. The Liberty Way covers nearly all aspects of a student’s life and includes bans on drinking and “being in any state of undress with a member of the opposite sex.”
As the document that Axley received phrased it, by moving ahead with the case, Axley was acknowledging that she herself could face “possible disciplinary actions.”
Universities across the country have long faced scrutiny for their handling, and mishandling, of sexual assault cases. But Liberty University’s responses to such cases stand out. Interviews with more than 50 former Liberty students and staffers, as well as records from more than a dozen cases, show how an ethos of sexual purity, as embodied by the Liberty Way, has led to school officials discouraging, dismissing and even blaming female students who have tried to come forward with claims of sexual assault."
Kind of incredible that Baylor could hire a person like this after what they had been accused of previously.
From the article:
After Axley returned to her dorm, she called the campus police department. One of the officers drove her to the local hospital, where, records show, a nurse documented 15 bruises, welts and lacerations on her arm, face and torso.
Axley wasn’t sure what to do next, but she did know that she wanted the man to “stay away from her,” as she recalled. So when Axley got back to her dorm that Sunday morning, she again told someone at Liberty, her resident adviser.
The RA, Axley said, told her not to report it, saying Axley could be found to have violated the school’s prohibition against drinking and fraternizing with the opposite sex.
Instead, the RA offered to pray with Axley.
“I was really confused,” recalled Axley. “They were making it seem like I had done something wrong.”
Axley didn’t want to pray. She wanted the school to do something about what had happened. “I didn’t want to get fined or punished, but I wasn’t going to let this keep me from reporting my assault.”
The next day, Axley went to the school’s federally mandated office for investigating sexual harassment and violence.
She had prepared.
Axley saved texts from that weekend. “He was all over you,” one concerned friend had written to her. It was “pretty damn weird.”
“I ****ing remember making noise and him covering my mouth oh my god,” Axley texted another friend in the early morning hours. She also took photos of the welts across her chest, multiple lacerations on her right upper arm and a bruised lip.
Instead of considering her evidence, Axley said, Bucci started throwing questions at her: Why had Axley gone to the party? What had she had to drink? How much? “I immediately felt judged,” remembered Axley. (Bucci, who is now a Title IX investigator at Baylor University, declined to comment.)
Then Axley waited. She received email updates saying the school was still looking into her case. After five months, Axley heard from Bucci that Liberty had completed its investigation and a committee was now going to consider the case. Bucci invited Axley to first come to the office and review the file.
Axley went in and looked through the materials. The photos with her injuries, she recalled, were no longer there. Axley said that when she asked what had happened, Bucci told her the photos had been removed because they were too “explicit.”
“I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach,” Axley recalled. “I had been relying on them all these months to take my evidence into account when considering my case, and it wasn’t even in my file.”
A few days later, Axley received another email from the university. It said that as the case was moving ahead for a final decision, Axley needed to sign a document acknowledging that she could be found to have violated the university’s code of conduct. The Liberty Way covers nearly all aspects of a student’s life and includes bans on drinking and “being in any state of undress with a member of the opposite sex.”
As the document that Axley received phrased it, by moving ahead with the case, Axley was acknowledging that she herself could face “possible disciplinary actions.”
Universities across the country have long faced scrutiny for their handling, and mishandling, of sexual assault cases. But Liberty University’s responses to such cases stand out. Interviews with more than 50 former Liberty students and staffers, as well as records from more than a dozen cases, show how an ethos of sexual purity, as embodied by the Liberty Way, has led to school officials discouraging, dismissing and even blaming female students who have tried to come forward with claims of sexual assault."
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