Sexual Assault and Privacy

I just finished reading an article on CNN about how the University of Kentucky is handling a sexual assault case.  While I don't know the details of the assault, this university associate professor is accused of sexual assault by two individuals.  He was allowed to voluntarily resign, maintain his tenure, and collected salary until the end of August.  And while we can discuss the various ways in which this professor received no punishment to the actual assault, this case does enter an interesting conversation.

The University of Kentucky is attempting to keep the documents about this case private.  That is, UK is suing their independently run student newspaper (who is attempting to access the open documents) so that they don't have to release the documents.

On one hand, keeping the documents private (as the university argues), protects the targets from humiliation, including citing that future targets (unrelated to this case) would be discouraged from coming forward if they felt their identity would be revealed.  In addition, the university looks to the FERPA and HIPAA laws as their argument for keeping the documents private. 

On the other hand, those that argue for the release of the documents say that all names and identifying markers can be removed from the documents.  They are only trying to inform the public about how the case was handled, including its outcome.  In addition, they say that the FERPA and HIPAA laws that the university are citing are only related to education-related information. 

But let's discuss this idea of privacy around sexual assault cases.  The standard that I have seen when reading about sexual assault/rape cases is that the targets names are not released (unless the target chooses to publicly release their name).  In this way, the target is protected from retribution from those that may support the perpetrator (among many other important reasons).  (One need only look to recent high profile cases that have been in the news to see how dividing sexual assault/rape cases can be). 

But is there harm in releasing the details of a case?  I can see that, if the target(s) approve of the release of information--even with names and identifying markers removed--that releasing the information of the case would be beneficial.  The public would be informed to what is occurring in their community.  I've been trying to think of a reason why releasing the information would be a poor idea and I keep coming back to the reasoning that UK is just trying to protect itself.  Did they handle something improperly?  Just what are the details of the case?  And why the secrecy?

And the university maintains that if the information is released, it will discourage other targets from coming forward.  Really??  While it may discourage some targets, I see it as empowering others to come forward. The word 'precedence' comes to mind.  If a target that is hesitant to come forward sees someone else come forward, I have observed, that the one that is hesitant will come forward.  Of course, I must contextualize that this observation comes from what I have read and seen in the media (and yes, I recognize that even the media has an agenda in the way that they present the story).

But the UK case has brought up an interesting aspect when considering the ramifications of sexual assault--that the protection of the target is vital, but the community also has a right to know what is going on.