Many agree with him, and see this as vigilantism. It does not give an accused man the opportunity to clear his name in court. And there are the rare cases when a false accusation is made. This is a traumatic and violating crime in its own right.

But when a man is falsely accused, there are a number of avenues he can pursue to seek justice. As well as rebutting the allegations in the forum where they are raised, he can complain to the police or sue for defamation. Women can, and have been, imprisoned for making false allegations of rape, such as in two widely reported cases in Britain in the last year. But I don’t think that women who have been raped should be obliged to protect the privacy of their attackers because women who have not been raped may make false claims.

You may think suing for defamation is an inadequate response to the problem of false accusations, because it is likely to be expensive, emotionally onerous, slow and often unsuccessful. If so, I urge you to reflect on why you think these hurdles are unacceptable for men who are falsely accused, but acceptable for women who have been raped.

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Publicly accusing rapists is far from a perfect solution, but at a time when a vast majority of rapes still go unpunished by the criminal justice system despite decades of reforms aimed at making the process more hospitable to victims, it may be one of the few options that many victims have for bringing some consequences to bear on those who rape.

Besides, justice and the criminal justice system are not one and the same. It is a fiction that justice must begin and end in the courtroom. Individuals and agencies have to make calls about the likelihood of guilt all the time. Child protective services, for instance, have to decide whether to remove children from their parents even when evidence of abuse is not sufficient to result in a criminal conviction. As human beings we have to make decisions about the rapists in our lives — whom we employ, whom we invite to family dinners.

Perhaps what is needed is to formalize the practice of naming perpetrators, in a way that best protects victims and minimizes the risks of false accusations. Specifically, I would like to see a charitable body that carefully investigates and reports on sexual assault, including naming perpetrators.

If this still sounds like vigilantism, consider that all I am describing is investigative journalism, with a specific purpose and subject matter. And that investigative journalism is an important institution of democracy, playing an especially vital role when other institutions like the courts prove incapable of delivering justice.

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The organization I am proposing would survive only if it observed rigorous investigative standards and did not make the error of simply assuming that a source was telling the truth, which a journalist should never do, even in the case of rape. The consequences for failing to do this are devastating, as Rolling Stone discovered after publishing the fabricated account of a gang rape by members of a University of Virginia fraternity. Despite not naming anyone as a perpetrator, the magazine has paid out millions of dollars in damages, after an administrator and a fraternity named in the story sued.

Any investigation would have to gather sufficient evidence to defend an action for defamation. In Australia, the United States and many other countries, truth is the best defense against libel charges. A single successful defamation case would be likely to bankrupt such an investigative body, providing a strong incentive against publishing speculative or unfounded reports.

It is time to accept that the criminal justice system may never be capable of providing justice for the vast majority of sexual assaults. The problem is not that we do not take rape seriously; we take it so seriously that we demand silence about perpetrators unless we are reporting on a court case and, as a result, very few perpetrators face any consequence at all.

We do not necessarily need longer prison sentences for those convicted of rape. What we need is a higher proportion of rapists to face some kind of punishment for their actions, whether it is admonishment from their families or the loss of a job. Because it is extraordinary how few rapists now experience any disruption to their lives.

And while it is right to guard against vigilantism, I don’t think it is right to say that a woman who has been raped owes anyone a duty to be silent.