Liberty University sign language professor William Atwell was arrested on November 20th by Liberty University Police on charges of sexual battery and abduction of a student, something which took 11 days for a reporter for a Lynchburg, Virginia-area ABC affiliate to notice in online court records – and fully 66 days after the assault took place on September 15th, 2021.

It took until Wednesday, after the arrest became public for the watch-from-the-corner guy’s former school to acknowledge it in a statement: “Liberty University takes nothing more seriously than claims that a faculty member has had inappropriate sexual contact with one of our students, something for which there is zero tolerance. We are treating this matter with the utmost seriousness, care, and concern. With the student’s consent, the university turned the matter over to the appropriate legal authorities and the faculty member in question was arrested. The faculty member has also been suspended by the university pending the outcome of this matter. To protect the integrity of investigation and the privacy of the student, we will limit further comment.”

It is not known precisely when – or even if – Atwell was ever removed from teaching classes in the two months between the incident and the arrest or when it was first reported. Liberty University is facing multiple ongoing lawsuits related to its mishandling and coverups of sexual assault and misconduct on campus, most notably cases in which female students were punished for reporting rapes and assaults, and most recently on November 24th when a student says that her case was “swept under the rug” by the “Christian” school after she became pregnant by a male student who drugged and raped her. Jerry Falwell Jr is also suing his former employer for defamation.