Evaluating Methods to Protect Sex Crime Victims’ Privacy: A Legal Analysis of States’ Attempts to Protect Victims’ Identities

Abstract

Disclosing sex crime victims’ identities without their consent can harm their autonomy, dignity, equality, and intimacy. This article analyzed how state statutes in the United States may protect sex-crime victims’ privacy interests. Several states have allowed punishing printing, publishing, or broadcasting sex crime victims’ identifying information in instruments of mass communication. Such laws have conflicted with constitutional rights when applied to punish truthful disclosures of matters of public significance lawfully obtained from public records. States, at times, may punish government employees for knowingly or intentionally disclosing victims’ identifying information stored in government records. Fewer constitutional concerns arise when states shield victims’ identities with pseudonyms or confidentiality provisions than when states use swords to punish disclosures in instruments of mass communication. Methods to shield victims’ privacy interests may recognize victims’ privacy rights without unduly limiting constitutionally protected expression rights.