Michigan State University will be fined a record $4.5 million over its handling of sexual abuse allegations against Larry Nassar, the sports doctor who treated Olympic gymnasts and was sentenced to 40 to 175 years in prison after more than 150 women and girls said he had sexually abused them.
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said Thursday the university is being fined for violations of the Clery Act, the federal law requiring colleges to report crimes on campus, for its handling of allegations against Nassar.
The fine is the largest ever under the Clery Act.As part of a settlement agreement, the university waived its right to appeal the fine.
DeVos also said the university signed a resolution agreement to change its procedures under Title IX — the law banning sex discrimination in federally funded education programs — after a separate investigation by the Office for Civil Rights concluded the university’s current procedures are “broken and that they must be fixed immediately.”
The Education secretary called events at the university “abhorrent” and said the crimes for which Nassar and his former supervisor William Strampel were convicted are “disgusting and unimaginable.”
“So too was the university’s response to their crimes,” she said in a conference call with reporters.
Investigators found that MSU didn’t adequately respond to complaints about the crimes and subjected students to a “sexually hostile environment,” denying them access to and the ability to benefit from their education, DeVos said. Strampel was sentenced last month to a year in jail for felony misconduct in office and willful neglect of duty.
“Too many people in power knew about the behaviors and the complaints and yet the predators continued on the payroll and abused even more students,” she said.
“The university repeatedly failed to take appropriate and prompt action to protect its students.”DeVos said her “heart goes out to” the survivors as they continue to heal.
“As I said repeatedly since I took office, we will always hold institutions accountable to the full extent of the law,” she said. “Schools must do better by their students.”
Education Department officials had lambasted MSU in January over preliminary findings of a probe into the school's failure to stop Nassar.
Their findings went way beyond the Nassar scandal, highlighting "several areas of serious noncompliance" with federal campus safety laws, including failing to warn students when school officials knew of potential threats on campus and low-balling campus crime statistics. The problems extended to other parts of MSU's athletics programs and its Greek life organizations, according to that report.
Article originally published on POLITICO Magazine