A former Liberty University staffer is suing the private Christian school, saying administrators fired him for reporting sexual harassment.
Peter Brake worked as an investigator in the university’s Title IX office, typically the unit that investigates claims of sexual violence on campus.
Among his claims, Brake, who was also an adjunct professor, alleges that his former boss harassed employees and was “prejudging cases.” He also states he reported his concerns to his supervisors, including the university president. The lawsuit says he was fired because he “opposed discrimination and reported multiple violations of law to Liberty’s leadership and senior managers.”
Brake's attorney, Andrew T. Miltenberg of the law firm, Nesenoff & Miltenberg, in a statement said his client filed suit after giving the university an opportunity to, "end its reign of oppression and inequity."
"In doing his job, Dr. Brake has repeatedly tried to protect the students and employees from the injustices occurring at Liberty University," Miltenberg wrote. "He is coming forward now to hold Liberty University accountable after it harshly retaliated against him."
In a statement to USA TODAY, the university said it learned of the suit on Tuesday and was still reviewing its details.
"Liberty takes all allegations of wrongdoing seriously and has impartial measures in place to assure the fair and equal treatment of all employees," the statement read. "While we will not respond to these allegations in the media at this time, we disagree with its claims and are prepared to defend ourselves in court."
The lawsuit, which was filed in the federal court in the Western District of Virginia on Friday, comes after Liberty University was penalized $16 million by the Biden-era Education Department in 2024 for creating a culture where students were afraid to report when they suffered sexual violence. The penalty is the largest of its kind. The agency also placed the school on federal monitoring through April 2026.
The Freedom Tower atop the Divinity School is seen on the campus of Liberty University, founded by Baptist minister Jerry Falwell Sr. as “an accredited Christian university for evangelical believers,” with a motto of “Training Champions for Christ,” in Lynchburg, Virginia U.S. April 14, 2023.
Liberty has said of the government’s finding that while it, “endured selective and unfair treatment by the Department, the university also concurs there were numerous deficiencies that existed in the past.”
The government's final report found that college officials overlooked and failed to record repeated instances of sexual violence on campus, and that the school failed to warn students about potential threats. It detailed university officials’ attempts to cover their tracks by seeking help from technology staff to delete hard drives. The allegations even included a former Liberty president accused of rape – an incident that didn’t appear in a daily campus crime log.
More:Christian college admin was accused of sexual misconduct for over a decade. He kept his job.
Liberty is one of the nation’s most prominent Christian universities and a mainstay among Republican luminaries. Jerry Falwell, a televangelist and conservative figure, started the school in 1971. Based in Virginia, the university has grown thanks to online students – about 124,000 combined in the 2023-24 academic year, according to the school – and it took nearly $880 million in federal financial aid for its students in the 2022-2023 academic year, according to the Department of Education.
What’s in the Brake lawsuit?
Brake served as an investigator in the Title IX office from 2019 to 2024, with a three-and-a-half-year absence to report for active military duty. He is a retired judge advocate in the Army Reserve, and he said he encountered multiple incidents of the university’s former Title IX coordinator, Nathan Friesema, telling investigators which outcomes to reach in their cases. Some other cases “sat idle and unresolved for more than a year,” according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit states that Brake brought concerns about Friesema to university President Dondi Costin at a reception for military veterans in November 2023. And when Brake faced pushback from the senior vice president of university compliance, Ashley Reich, for raising concerns, he went back to Costin expressing fear of losing his job.
“I’m confident your leadership understands that retaliation is not allowed around here, so don’t give that possibility another thought,” Costin wrote in response.
Brake also told Reich that Friesema had steered Title IX investigations by asking “leading questions” and “embellished complaints,” the lawsuit says In one incident, he described a professor as having “sexual desire in his eyes” in support of leering allegations. The goal, Brake alleged, was to trigger a violation of the university’s Title IX and sexual misconduct policies.
In May 2024, Brake said he helped two coworkers report to Reich that Friesema sexually harassed them. In one case, a staffer reported Friesema made sexually inappropriate comments to her, such as “sharing a personal anecdote about a high-school teacher having sex with a student.” Another unnamed employee alleged that Friesema had subjected her to “‘jokes’ about sexual assault,” and bragged “that he sold t-shirts on his ETSY shop with the logo, ‘I Love Butt Stuff,’ a crude reference to anal sex.” The lawsuit stated that Friesema was suspended after the employees’ complaints.
Brake alleges he was fired in June 2024 after filing a formal complaint against Reich in May. He purports the university says it fired him for unspecified “compliance” issues. He is suing for an unspecified amount of damages, claiming the university violated Title IX and protections for military employees and whistleblowers in Virginia.
