Ruth Hall of Women Against Rape recently told the press: False rape accusations are rare but receive disproportionate publicity

Ruth Hall, of Women Against Rape, recently told the press: “False rape accusations are rare but receive disproportionate publicity. People wrongly believe that lots of women who claim rape are liars – a misconception that would be reinforced if men accused of sex offences got special rights to anonymity. Of course, it is a terrible ordeal for those wrongly accused. But the same can be said of murder, theft, fraud, or any other serious offence.”This sounds perfectly fair and sensible, and you wouldn’t have to be a feminist in order to agree with it. Except that, if all these crimes are the same, then why is the accuser granted anonymity in rape cases?The exception is made because in cases of rape, the victim is usually terribly ashamed and traumatised. Unlike the victims of theft, fraud, or even murder, the victim is dogged by the idea that people will “think she was asking for it” or will even wonder herself if that was the case.

The exception is made because rape is exceptional, a sexual crime that leaves all women vulnerable, and which often is without proof.These are some of the reasons why women so often fail to report rapes to the police. These are some of the reasons why, even when they do report rapes, so few of them go to court. These are some of the reasons why, once rape cases do come to court, fewer than 10 per cent of them result in a conviction. And these are some of the reasons, too, why we are so prurient about rape. Rape, for the disinterested spectator, is a free-for-all, a whodunnit in which the likelihood is that we’ll never really know.Recently the pop stars Paul Weller and Mick Hucknall have both been splashed over the papers, the allegations of rape made against them reported before they had been charged, let alone convicted. Their sexual histories were splashed all over the papers even though there was, in the event, no need in either case for any evidence to be gathered. In the case of these celebrities, it is the prurience of the press that demands anonymity.

But for any small community, unproven accusations have the same results. People pruriently believe, in the case of accuser and defendant, that “there’s no smoke without fire”.Yet while granting anonymity to men accused of rape is not likely to make any difference at all to the conviction rate for rape, there are other measures which could. Details of Lord Justice Auld’s report into the retooling of the judicial process have already been leaked. It is suggested that they could include the proposal that juries be allowed to hear details of a defendant’s previous convictions. This proposal is bound to be controversial, but in rape cases I believe changes should go even further than this.In a recent rape case, an appeal was made to the House of Lords that five women should be allowed to give evidence against 39-year-old Nicholas Edwards.