Re: Presumably
I thought I'd add the following to my previous comment:
As the law stands, at the moment, it is (rightly) a crime to disclose the identity of a victim or complainant, even after the case has closed; after all, as mentioned above a 'not guilty' verdict is NOT necessarily the same as innocent.
However, the same does not go for the accused; their identity can be disclosed, even if found not guilty, and I do not believe this to be in the best interests of justice.
I will illustrate this with the following case:
Last year, there was a high-profile case where a woman had (falsely) accused her partner of rape. If I recall the details correctly, the woman in question was a law student and was abut to take her bar exams. She had not adequately prepared, so in order to get more time to study, she concocted a tale of sexual violence perpetrated against her by her then partner. Despite having an alibi (again, I'm going from memory, but I believe the accused wasn't even in the same city at the time of the accusation), the man was arrested, bailed, and prosecuted.
Such cases take a long time to bring to court, typically several months, and in the intervening time, the accused lost his job and reputation, and was subject to public vilification and hatred. As the accused, his identity was made public.
He was later exonerated of all the charges, and his accuser was found guilty of attempting to pervert the course of justice, and jailed. A just punishment, I'm sure all will agree. However, in the process, his life was pretty much ruined, and this was largely because the identities of those accused are made a matter of public record, and reported on in the press.
It is worth remembering that the point of the judicial system is not only to prosecute the guilty, but to protect the innocent.
Of course, this was an extreme case, and such occurrences are, thankfully, rare. Sadly, for every false accusation, there are probably thousands of genuine rape cases, and the conviction rate is low. However, it is better to allow the guilty to go free than it is to imprison the innocent. Either way, whatever the outcome of the case, the identity of the victim shouldn't be a matter of public record, and unless convicted, neither should the identity of the accused.
edit - in case anyone is interested, here is the case in question