Handling of old allegations against University of Virginia suspect scrutinized

Two Virginia universities are pressing each other to unearth the information they exchanged after an on-campus rape allegation against Jesse “LJ” Matthew Jr. more than a decade ago, when the football player was transferring from Liberty University to Christopher Newport University shortly after a woman accused him of sexual assault.

Matthew, 32, has been charged with abduction in last month’s disappearance of University of Virginia sophomore Hannah Elizabeth Graham, an alleged kidnapping that police say was for the purposes of sexually assaulting the 18-year-old from Fairfax County. The search continues for Graham, who went missing after witnesses saw her with Matthew in the early hours of Sept. 13 on Charlottesville’s Downtown Mall.

The allegations against Matthew from the early 2000s are receiving renewed law-enforcement scrutiny amid a widening investigation spurred by the Graham case.

Liberty and CNU officials said they are cooperating in that investigation, which has expanded beyond Graham to encompass two more unsolved attacks on women, including a violent sexual assault in Fairfax City in 2005 and the case of Morgan Harrington, a Virginia Tech student who disappeared from Charlottesville in 2009 and was later found dead.

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