Liberty University sexual assault scandal to be explored in a docuseries in collaboration with Tom Arnold

Deadline

ProPublica recently reported on how the university founded by Southern Baptist preacher Jerry Falwell discourages and dismisses students' reports of sexual assault. Talos Films, the production company behind series including HBO’s Torn Apart and Discovery+’s Queen of Meth, will turn the decades-long accusations into a documentary in partnership with Tom Arnold, who reported the story for the third season of podcast series Gangster Capitalism. The podcast told the story of the rise and fall of Jerry Falwell Jr., Falwell's son. As Deadline notes, "Falwell Jr. resigned from the university after it emerged that he had allegedly regularly watched his wife have sex with another man – one that he had given investment money in a hotel scheme. Twenty-two former students have joined together in a legal case holding the university accountable for its inaction and pressing for fundamental change to the institutional culture and policies that allowed this alleged abuse to happen. In their lawsuit, the women say Liberty University put them at risk in part because its code of conduct emphasizes sexual purity.  They argue that the educational establishment’s rules on sexual behavior created a culture that fostered sexual violence and even punished women for reporting it."