My understanding from my involvement in this is as follows:
a) rapists/sexual abusers/gropers/sexual harassers are almost universally serial offenders, hence the need to name them as it does encourage others to come forward.
b) the advantage of others coming forward is the opportunity it provides the CPS/police to develop a pattern of behaviour/details etc that corroborates other alleged victims stories
c) that is important because sexual crimes are by their very nature "he said, she said" crimes and hence more than one victim provides the necessary extra evidence required for conviction - for instance if an alleged groper likes as he does it to say "you are a naughty girl, aren't you" and the alleged victims have never met each other and all report this, then it provides considerable additional weight to the alleged victims accusation
I would also like to make the following points:
a) 3% of reported rapes are false accusations
b) only 12% of reported rapes result in conviction, adjusting that for the false claimants 12.37% of rapes therefore result in conviction.
c) but 58% of rape cases brought to trial result in conviction in 2008. This compares to 57% for all reportable crimes
d) what this means is that around a quarter of reported rapes progress to trial
So what does this tell us? Well it tells us that when cases come to trial there does not seem to be any greater presumption of innocence or guilt for sexual crimes than for any other form of crime, despite the uncorroborated nature of sex crimes. So what does this tell us?
It tells us possibly that when sexual crimes are brought to trial, it is normally because there is some other form of evidence other than just the alleged victim's word. To use an analogy, in a burglary, the police would not just pick random Joe Bloggs off the street and say "hey it was you that burgled that house over there", they would need some evidence ie forensic, catching them with the stolen goods, a witness statement, pattern of previous crime, confession etc. Ditto with a murder there would need to be more evidence other than just a motive.
It may tell us that the CPS only bring sexual crimes when they believe they have a good chance of conviction.
To contrast for instance with murder, c. 4% of murders are unsolved and the conviction rate for those accused of murder is 65%, so in essence c. 62% of reported murders result in conviction. This compares to 12.37% of reported rapes.
THIS IS DESPITE the victims having anonymity. So while I can see the inequality in rape victims having anonymity, my question would be: in what way would it help conviction rates to remove that anonymity? Or alternatively to grant anonymity to the alleged perpetrator. Kier Stammer is on record as saying that granting anonymity to alleged perpetrators would reduce the number of cases brought to trial.