PENNSYLVANIA — (CNN) The US Department of Education has fined Penn State University $2.4 million for violating the Clery Act, a law that requires universities to report crime on campus, putting thousands of children at risk.

It’s the largest fine in the history of the act, the Department of Education said in a statement Thursday, announcing its findings in a report about the university’s compliance with the Clery Act.

The investigation by the department’s Office of Federal Student Aid began shortly after former Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky was charged with being a serial pedophile and prosecutors said many of the crimes occurred on Penn State’s campus.

“Penn State’s failure to act, despite possessing sufficient evidence about the danger Sandusky posed denied many of the opportunity to be informed about serious threats to the health and safety of campus community members,” says the report, which was issued almost exactly five years after Sandusky’s arrest,.

“Penn State deprived students and employees as well as the parents and guardians of an estimated 20,000 children participating in youth camps at Penn State every year and the many thousands more attending concerts, sporting events, and other activities on the campus of critical safety information involving a dangerous situation existing on the Penn State campus,” the report continued.

The Clery Act was established in 1990, four years after Lehigh University student Jeanne Clery was murdered on campus. It says that universities must annually report crime on campus.

But Penn State violated nearly every aspect of the law, the report says.

“This pattern of noncompliance indicates a severe administrative impairment,” the report says, calling into question “the University’s ability and willingness” to adhere to other federal rules, such as federal student aid programs.

It’s unclear at this point what other ramifications could come from this.

The $2.4 million fine is seven times larger than the biggest fine previously doled out by the Department of Education for a Clery violation. Prior to this, Eastern Michigan University had been fined $350,000 in 2008 for the death of Laura Dickerson. An investigation by the department found that the university lied to Dickerson’s parents about her murder.

Penn State did not yet have a comment or response to the report or the fine.

Sandusky was convicted in 2012 of sexually abusing 10 boys, many of them in Penn State’s locker rooms. Just last week, a former assistant football coach, Mike McQueary, who witnessed one of those assaults and reported it to Penn State officials, won a $7.3 million verdict in his civil case against the university.

Sandusky is appealing his conviction and maintains his innocence.

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