No one wants to talk about how it could happen to them. Everyone wants to know when it happens to someone else. If people want to know, should media outlets publish the names of rape victims? After all, no one seems to have a problem when victims of robbery or carjacking end up on the front page.,”Rape. Half the people that started this article just stopped reading. Rape. It's taboo.

No one wants to talk about how it could happen to them. Everyone wants to know when it happens to someone else. If people want to know, should media outlets publish the names of rape victims? After all, no one seems to have a problem when victims of robbery or carjacking end up on the front page.

I once had another woman say to me and others that 80 percent of people who report rape are making it up in order to get attention. If the names of these women were used in the media, she reasoned, they would be held accountable for their stories and therefore be less inclined to lie. A woman said this.

A 21-year-old woman, who has a one in six chance of being raped in her lifetime, said this. A woman who, if complying with statistics, has had at least one close friend or relative violently raped already, said this. I cannot begin to grasp how anyone could think this, let alone say it out loud.

Our society views rape differently than other crimes. If a car is stolen, it is never the owner's fault because she parked it in a bad area. Or because it had been stolen before. Or because it was red instead of blue. Yet society somehow has created a way in which to shift the fault of a rape onto the victim. She went to that party. She slept with him before. She wore that skirt.

As a journalist, I see the dilemma editors face in weighing whether or not to name a victim. Thank extraordinary professors who incessantly drill the phases give credit where credit is due and every quote or group of quotes needs and attribution into the subconscious of their students. No name, no news.

As a woman, however, I stand strong. Rape is something so deeply personal that many victims tell no one, let alone report the incident to the police. Imagine having the most traumatic and internally wrenching experience of your life thrown into the world for everyone to see, to examine, to tear apart and to judge. Imagine walking down the street having people point, whisper and stare. Imagine if this was your mother, your sister, or even yourself.

Yeah, go ahead. Print the name. I am lucky. I have never been a victim of a sexual assault. I have never had to wake up in the morning next to someone I do not know and wonder what happened. I have never had to lie in the back of a car while the boy who just took me to dinner climbed on top of me. I have never had to live through the agony of telling my parents. I have never had to see their hearts break in their eyes. I have never had to walk to class and pass my attacker in the stairwell. Every. Single. Day. But I know women who have.

Printing the names of rape victims is more than stamping a word on a piece of newsprint. It is stamping a reputation on the body of the woman being named. No longer is she Jill or Samantha. She is Slut, Used, Broken, Whore. Seeing her name in print makes her assault inescapably permanent. As hard as victims try to erase the experience, it would always be staring back at them in black and white.

It is estimated that anywhere from 50 to 90 percent of rapes go unreported. It takes a tremendously strong and audacious person to be able to stand up and say, I was violated in order to help someone else avoid enduring the same experience.

The least the news media can do is honor victims courage by protecting their privacy, their dignity and their chance at feeling like themselves again.

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