A photo gallery dedicated to making abuse survivors visible at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill called "the Courage Project" was vandalized last week, the Daily Tar Heel reported.

Before she and other UNC-Chapel Hill students filed a federal complaint against their school for not properly reporting their sexual assault cases to authorities, Andrea Pino started the Courage Project.

The project is a photo gallery in the school's Student Union displaying people who have survived abuse, but the photos show the men and women smiling.

"The stories are not easy to read, but the people in the pictures are not sad," Pino said. "It really put a face on sexual assault."

The gallery was vandalized either late Thursday night or early Friday morning, with an unknown person writing, "whore" and "real s--t" on the photo of a former UNC student who said she was an abuse survivor.

"This gallery is just supposed to be a place where people can feel safe," Pino said. "If that's not safe, what is?"

Pino created the gallery when she was co-chair of a student group called Project Dinah, whose mission was to combat sexual violence. She said Project Courage inspired Landen Gambill, a co-signer of the federal complaint, to come forward with her rape allegations.

Gambill, Pino and a UNC alumna filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education's (ED) Office of Civil Rights (OCR) in January. The complaint alleges UNC violated the Clery Act, requiring accurate and timely reporting by a school to proper authorities, and Title IX, a gender equality law.

Pino told the Huffington Post the Courage Project vandalism was discovered around five a.m. Friday and Scott Hudson, senior associate director of the Carolina union, filed a police report later that morning.

This instance of vandalism adds to another similar case from April. ABC Chapel Hill previously reported an incident where someone left sexually offensive graffiti on her dorm room door and left a knife at the scene. In addition, a Title IX banner was also damaged with a drawing of a sexually explicit image.

Sheena Ozaki, Dinah chairwoman, said she was disappointed by the Project Courage vandalism, but does not believe the person responsible reflects the views of many.

"When I've told people about it, the reaction tends to be disappointment. People are shocked and horrified," she told the Daily Tar Heel. "It does feel really bad that this happened, but it was just one person that did this. I don't think this reflects our student body at all."