Sexual Crimes: The Issue of Anonymity for The Accused.
There is also the issue of believability associated with sexual attacks. Perpetrators of sexual attacks tend to target their victims in secluded places where the perpetrators know they cannot be found by other people. These can be in the office or at home where no one else is around. Therefore, the allegations of such sexual attacks tend to involve the words of the victims against the words of the perpetrators. If they fear that they cannot be believed, many victims will not report the incident to the authority.
In order to encourage victims of sexual attacks to report the crimes, there is the law protecting the identity of victims of sexual crimes from publicity. Any person who reveals the victim’s identity can be prosecuted for contempt of court. The punishment can involve serving lengthy years behind bars.
In contrast, there is the law that allows the identity of any person accused of sexual assault to be revealed. It is hoped that by publicising the name of the defendant other possible victims of his or her crime can come forward to report their own experience. This strategy has recorded some successes in the past. Some prolific sexual predators had been successfully prosecuted and sent to prison after the publicity of the perpetrators identities had led other victims of horrible crimes committed by the same attackers to come forward and report the experience.
While supporters of it can point to this evidence involving the successful prosecution of some prolific sex predators after the publicity of their identity had led other victims of the attackers crimes to come forward and report the incident, critics have argued that denying people accused of sexual attacks the right to anonymity is unfair. For these critics, revealing the identity of the accused is similar to passing a guilty verdict on the accused even when the trial has not taken place.
The reputation of any person accused of sexual attacks is tarnished for life. This is regardless of whether the defendant was found not guilty of the charges. People have the notion that there is no smoke without fire. That is, a person cannot be accused of sexual attack unless he or she has been involved in something relating to the act. This can be supported by the fact that if the defendant is found not guilty of sexual crime by the court, it does not mean that the defendant may have not committed the act. The verdict of not guilty only implies that there was no sufficient evidence to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the defendant had committed the act. In other words, people who had been found not guilty of sexual crimes may have committed the act but got away with them due to lack of evidence.
Arguing however that every defendant found not guilty of sexual crime belongs to this group is flawed. I believe that some of the accused who were arraigned before court for sexual offences and later found not guilty of the charges were innocent of the acts. Accepting the opposite will undermine the fact that people have the tendency to tell lies to suit their interest. This happens in every walk of life. Therefore, telling lies about sexual victimisation cannot be an exception considering that they can be some financial rewards associated with the victimisation
This realisation that some people can tell lies about their sexual experience suggests that people accused of sexual crimes should be entitled to anonymity until they are found guilty of the offences. Like the victims, they have rights that the state should protect. After all, these are people who have only been accused of an act and have not been found guilty of it. Denying them the right to anonymity is similar to passing the guilty verdict on a person even before the trial begins. We should either extend the right to anonymity to the accused or remove the right to anonymity to every person associated with sexual crimes including victims.
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