As Swedish prosecutors' sex-crime allegations against Julian Assange play out, one aspect merits scrutiny. We know Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, by name. But his two accusers are consistently identified as ''Miss A'' and ''Miss W'' in the media. In Britain it is against the law to name an accuser in a sex-crime case once a complaint has been made; elsewhere - in the US, and much of Europe - media convention demands that accusers get the same protection. This is bad law and bad policy. Motivated by good intentions, the outcome harms women.

The shielding of rape accusers is a relic of the Victorian era, when rape and other sex crimes were being codified in what has become modern law. Rape was seen as ''the fate worse than death'', rendering women ''damaged goods''. The practice of not naming victims took hold for this reason.

Borrowing from a poem by Coventry Patmore, Virginia Woolf labelled the ideal of womanhood in this period ''the angel in the house'': a retiring creature who could not withstand the rigours of the public arena. ''Good'' women's ostensible fragility and sexual purity was used to exclude them from influencing outcomes that affected their destinies. For example, women could not fully participate in legal proceedings. Indeed, suffragists fought for the right to be found guilty of one's own crimes.

Nonetheless, even after women gained legal rights, the convention of not naming women who make sex-crime allegations remains. Not only is this condescending, but it makes rape prosecutions more difficult.

Anonymity serves institutions that do not want to prosecute rapists. My alma mater, Yale, used anonymity to sweep incidents under the carpet for two decades. Charges made anonymously are not taken as seriously as charges brought in public.