Time has an interesting article that focuses on the current practice of keeping sex crime victims' identities in criminal cases secret, but allowing public identification in civil cases:
In criminal prosecutions for rape or sexual assault, about half a dozen states require that an adult victim's identity be kept secret (others require anonymity only if the prosecution or court requests it). That's because the state assumes that the promise of anonymity will encourage victims to come forward. When a woman accused basketball star Kobe Bryant of rape in Colorado, for example, the world was told his name but officially not hers. To this day, only 38% of rapes or sexual assaults are reported in the U.S., putting rape among the nation's least reported crimes, according to the Department of Justice.
The rules are different in civil cases. Since the government isn't a party, it cares less whether the victim comes forward, and so it leaves the issue of anonymity up to the judge. When Bryant's accuser sued him for damages, she was told she had to use her real name. Like Lynch, the judge in that case decided "public confidence in the results of court proceedings require[s] that they be open to observation," accuser's privacy be damned.
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