The media, and some states' laws, have a decades-old practice of not identifying victims of rape, but are free to publish the names and photos of those accused of rape. The logic behind this policy was to encourage rape victims to discount the stigma associated with the crime and come forward and report it. Hand-in-hand with this policy was the belief peddled by some feminists that "a woman doesn't lie about rape."

Well, that's not true and everyone knows it. In fact, the very justification for keeping rape victims' names out of the newspaper and off of TV may have had the effect of making it easier for false rape claims to be made. Columnist and Fox News commentator Cal Thomas pegged the percentage of false rape claims at 20 percent last weekend on "Fox News Watch." That's one in five rape claims that are false.

I'm not sure how this applies to the Duke "scandal," but if the information that is in the press is accurate, then I don't see how the state can meet a standard of "preponderance of the evidence," let alone the "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard.

If it turns out that this woman is lying, then the district attorney and the media have drug two young men's names through the mud for no reason. Where once the overriding concern was over the stigma of rape, there seems to be little concern over the stigma of being accused falsely of rape.

The reason I raise this issue is a case out of Yorkshire, England. The headline says it all: "Teacher who died in prison is cleared posthumously of rape."