Charges were dismissed against four men accused of raping a Hofstra student after a video taken on a cell phone proved that the woman was lying and that she had consensual sex with the men. After the video was shown, the student told the truth, and the charges were dismissed.

The initial report to the police indicated that on Sunday the 15th one of the men was dancing with the woman on the Hofstra campus. He playfully took her cell phone. She followed him to a dorm where five men tied her up and raped her in the men’s room. But, the truth of the matter is that no one was tied up or raped. It was only after the cell phone was examined that the charges were dismissed, Thursday. During that five day period the men’s names and pictures were widely published in the press and on-line. Rapists are considered to be among the lowest of the low in jail and while the young men were locked up they were afraid of being assaulted.

The woman’s name has not been released in line with the policy of most newspapers not to name victims of rape. But releasing her name now would discourage others from making false report. At this point she is a suspect in a criminal investigation for making a false report. The police had no problem releasing the names of the four men accused of raping her when they were suspects in a crime but they have not released her name. The press called the men brutal, predatory, and vicious even though they were innocent. Their pictures were spread throughout the media and on-line. But now that the woman is a suspect of a making a false report and presumably a defendant in a civil suit, her name is not even being released, yet alone her picture.

There is a double standard that treats alleged rape victims differently from other alleged victims. Generally the press has a policy of not naming rape victims in order to save them from further embarrassment. But it has no problem with naming alleged criminals who may be found not guilty even thought the embarrassment can be significant.

In the ideal world neither suspects or victims would not be named in the press. This is particularly true of suspects who in our society are innocent until proven guilty. As the father of one of young men say, someday someone is going to Google his son and find only the rape allegation and not the recantation. But since this is not the ideal world and suspects are going to be named in the press victims ought to be named also. Being a rape victim is no longed as hideous as it was in years past. By naming the victims we let people in the community come forward and either state that the victim is trustworthy or not. Perhaps if the Hofstra student’s name had been in the press enough people would have come forward with information showing her lack of credibility that the men would have been released earlier.