For decades, officials at Bob Jones University told sexual assault victims that they were to blame for their abuse, and to not report it to the police because doing so would damage their families, churches and the university, according to a long-awaited independent report released Thursday. Bob Jones, an evangelical Christian institution, displayed a "blaming and disparaging" attitude toward abuse victims, according to 56 percent of the 381 current and former students and employees who replied to a confidential survey and said they had knowledge of how the university handled abuse cases. Abuse victims said the university actively discouraged them from going to the police. "I was abused from the ages of 6 to 14 by my grandfather," one respondent said. "When I went for counselling I was told: 'Did you repent for your part of the abuse?" Another person said that at Bob Jones, "abuse victims are considered 'second-rate Christians.' " And another said, "by the time I left B.J.U., I didn't think God loved me at all." The criticism of Bob Jones differs from that prompted by the sexual-assault scandals that have erupted at colleges across the country, in that it is not primarily about assaults on or near campus. Rather, the university has been criticized for penalizing victims who reported incidents or sought treatment.