So this young woman reported the allegations to the political party to which this man belonged. Then she named him on Twitter and published a photograph of her injuries, purple bruising spreading across her neck and shoulder. The man was suspended from the political party; he deleted his social medial presence almost entirely. He denies all the allegations and says that he will be pursuing legal action. “In Australia,” he told me over email, “justice is served through our established justice system,” not through a “social media lynch mob.”

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 be, 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.

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.