Amid a federal investigation into its role in downplaying and ignoring reports of campus sexual assaults, Liberty University has continued to employ a man accused for more than a decade of repeatedly harassing his subordinates, including student workers.
Piecing together details from a leaked version of the U.S. Department of Education’s investigative report and those from a lawsuit filed by survivors, along with accounts of former students and employees, USA TODAY has identified the man as Keith Anderson, who oversees student health at the Christian college.
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Liberty faces a potential multimillion dollar fine from the Education Department for its treatment of students, including allegations that it failed to warn them of potential dangers. Investigators said there was no indication it alerted the Virginia campus after Anderson, identified in its report as Employee A, “engaged in a pattern of disturbing behaviors” from 2012 to 2014, when he was dean of students.
His “inappropriate sexual behavior,” the May report said, likely posed a “serious threat.”
Two of the dozen women who sued Liberty in 2021 over the school’s response to sexual assault, named Anderson as the man who attacked or harassed them. Several events described in that suit are mirrored in the government report, including one where Anderson showed up at an employee’s home unannounced and forced her to take “medicine” that left her drowsy. The civil suit alleges that the woman woke to Anderson’s hands around her neck.
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USA TODAY spoke with a student who had worked in the Dean of Students office and recalled an incident in 2013 with Anderson that left her feeling ashamed. The woman said she was wearing a pencil skirt with a hem at the knee when she entered Anderson’s office and sat on the couch.
“He told me I was inappropriate, and I then needed to cover myself because my knees were showing,” the woman told USA TODAY. “I cannot even tell you what the rest of that meeting was about because I was so humiliated.”
The woman, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive topic, said at the time she felt like a “sinner” for potentially causing a Christian man to stumble in his faith. She left the university shortly after, but it took her more than half a decade before she could look back on the event with clear eyes.
“I feel that he made those big, holy gestures to cover up what he was doing behind closed doors (which is a pun here – because men and women couldn’t be in a room together with a closed door),” she wrote in a message to a reporter.
Liberty University did not answer USA TODAY’s specific questions, but said broadly of questions related to Anderson that, “governmental reviewers and Jane Does 1 and 8 have all received truthful and appropriate explanations.” Anderson did not respond to USA TODAY’s requests for comment.
Liberty is one of the nation’s most prominent Christian universities and a popular speaking destination among top Republican politicians. Jerry Falwell, a prominent televangelist and conservative booster who supported Ronald Reagan, started the school in 1971. Based in Virginia, the university owes its recent growth to online students – a combined student body of about 93,000 – and it received about $857 million in federal money for student aid, making it one of the largest recipients of such funding.
Accepting that student assistance is what automatically triggered oversight by the Education Department. Part of its inquiry focused on the Liberty Way, the university student code of conduct that survivors say created an environment that allowed sexual violence to go unmonitored and unchecked. And in 2021, ProPublica documented how women who had been raped faced potential violations of the school’s code of conduct after they reported what happened to them.
The department’s investigation of Liberty continues, with a large fine expected. After receiving the May report, the college said it responded by, “detailing significant errors, misstatements, and unsupported conclusions in the Department’s preliminary findings.”
University President Dondi Costin recently told Fox News that Liberty was facing a $37.5 million penalty. He added he believed the government was unfairly targeting the school and accused it of leaking the May report.
The institution’s image as a Christian sanctuary has been challenged in recent years, often by the actions of its own leadership. Jerry Falwell Jr. – who took over as president after his father’s death in 2007 and helped shape it into the massive institution it is today – resigned in 2020 after a sex scandal involving him, his wife and another man. Falwell Jr. was also among the first Evangelical conservatives to endorse Donald J. Trump in the leadup to the 2016 election.
Who is Keith Anderson and what did he do at Liberty?
On Liberty’s website, Anderson is identified as the executive director of student health and wellness, an office that oversees health records, wellness initiatives and on campus medical treatment. He has been at Liberty since at least 2007, when he was named dean of students, overseeing student counseling, spiritual guidance and discipline. As of 2014, he had been replaced in that job by Robert Mullen, according to a news release. No reason was given; the announcement said only Anderson, “now serves as the director of student health records.” Anderson is also a pastor in the Lynchburg area.
The civil case against Liberty initially involved a dozen women identified as “Jane Does” to protect their identities as potential victims. The women alleged that Liberty created an environment where rape and sexual harassment were more likely to happen due to the university’s rules and through, “public and repeated retaliation against women who did report their victimization.” Ten more were prepared to join the suit, and all but two settled with the university, in a confidential agreement.
Jane Doe 8 said Anderson made “sexually explicit comments directed toward her and to student workers and other supervisors.” These incidents occurred from 2008 to 2011, she said, while she worked in the student conduct office. The university was aware of Anderson’s behavior and responded by revealing Jane Doe 8’s identity to Anderson, the suit states. That led Anderson to increase “his campaign of inappropriate and sexual comments,” the lawsuit says, causing her to eventually leave her job.
She said she reported the incident to several university leaders, including Falwell Jr. and Jonathan Falwell – his brother and lead pastor of Thomas Road Baptist Church – but didn’t receive a response from any of them. Falwell Jr. recently told USA TODAY that top administrators, “saw it as their job to keep me from being aware of any reported crimes or accusations of assault.”
A similar incident is referenced in the Education Department report where a former employee in 2012 reported to university leadership and “the pastor of Thomas Road Baptist Church that for at least three years, she continuously felt uncomfortable and afraid of Employee A due to his disturbing behavior and sexually charged comments.”
USA TODAY obtained an email written by a former employee in the Dean of Students office that contained similar allegations. The message was addressed in 2012 to Falwell Jr. and Neil Askew, a board trustee.
The sender wrote that he had worked for demanding and vulgar supervisors while in the military, but he could “not in good conscience continue to work for Keith.” The writer blamed more than a dozen departures in the dean of students’ office on Anderson’s leadership.
“In the past year, two of the female employees in the office told me that Keith had made comments of a sexually inappropriate nature to them,” the email read.
The former Liberty employee went on to write that Anderson made derogatory comments toward other administrators, insinuating one was racist and that another was gay – and thus should be avoided.
Unwanted house visits, an unmarked pill and questions over Anderson’s job
The connections between the civil suit and the Education Department report are clearest in the case of Jane Doe 1. She was a Liberty employee who suffered an allergic reaction, “on or about Oct. 15, 2013.” Anderson, who was her supervisor, arrived at her home with medication described as “a single, unmarked and unwrapped tablet,” the suit said. She initially refused to take it but relented, she said, to try to get Anderson to leave. She became woozy and fell asleep. She woke up to Anderson’s hands around her neck, the suit says. She then threatened to scream and he finally left.
The suit alleges that…
