LOS ANGELES _ Her lawsuit alleging she was raped by NBA star Derrick Rose has made national headlines.
The New York Knicks point guard has been dogged by questions about her claim during preseason news events. And she recently gave a lengthy interview with reporters during a conference call about the case.
But in the year since her federal civil lawsuit was filed in Los Angeles, the woman known in court filings only as "Jane Doe" has remained anonymous to most of the world.
That secrecy now looks set to end.
In a ruling last month, a federal judge decided if the case doesn't settle and, as seems likely, goes to trial on Tuesday, then the 30-year-old accuser will have to be named.
The case is the latest to raise a legal and ethical question that has remained unresolved for decades: Should a person accusing someone of rape have the right to remain anonymous in court? The woman at the center of the lawsuit argued that her identity should remain a secret out of fear that fans of Rose would unleash a torrent of harassment and possible violence against her and her family if her name is made public.
Rose and the other men have not been criminally charged, although Los Angeles police say they continue to investigate the case since the woman came forward to file a report last year _ two years after the alleged rape.
In granting the woman anonymity in the lead up to trial but then reversing course for the actual proceeding, U.S. District Judge Michael W. Fitzgerald sought a middle ground between conflicting legal principles.
"The public does, of course, have some interest in (her) true identity, especially in light of the publicity surrounding this action," Fitzgerald wrote in his decision. "The public has an equally strong interest, however, in encouraging victims of sexual assault to bring claims against their assailants."
There are many instances in which judges allowed people who brought civil cases involving rape allegations or other personal issues to keep their identities cloaked at trial. The most notable, perhaps, is the landmark abortion rights case Roe v. Wade, in which the woman at the center of the case was known as Jane Roe. And in a case frequently cited by judges and lawyers, the federal appeals court in California allowed a group of immigrant garment workers to sue their employer anonymously because of their concerns they would be deported.
More often than not, however, federal judges shy away from hidden identities at trial, experts said. Attempts to shield information presented in court from public view must be weighed against the longstanding principle of transparency in the justice system, which is based on the idea that shining a light on the workings of the judiciary reduces the chances of injustice, incompetence or fraud.
"For the most part, judges have been reluctant to allow pseudonyms, because they're afraid of violating this very fundamental tenet of judicial openness," said Jayne Ressler, a professor at Brooklyn Law School who has studied the question of anonymity in courts.
Ressler said many states, including California, readily grant anonymity to rape victims in criminal proceedings, but the rules do not necessarily carry into civil proceedings.
In a similar case, a 27-year-old woman also using the pseudonym "Jane Doe" filed a lawsuit two years ago in Washington D.C. accusing Cincinnati Reds pitcher Alfredo Simon Cabrera of rape. A federal court judge ruled that she could remain anonymous only until the trial, but the case was dismissed at her request late last year.
The tendency of civil court judges to favor openness when it comes to rape claims frustrates Ressler and others, such as Meg Garvin, executive director of the National Crime Victim Law Institute. Allowing a woman to go through trial as a Jane Doe does little to reduce a court's transparency, they said, while exposing her identity harms her and discourages future victims of sexual assault from coming forward.
The speed with which information now spreads through social media only raises the stakes, they said. While most mainstream media outlets follow policies generally against naming accusers in rape cases, the public does not adhere to any such rules on Facebook, Instagram and other online sites.
"The name doesn't matter. What's important is what happened. Did the man rape this woman?" Ressler said.
The case involving Rose, who was for many years a marquee player with the Chicago Bulls until a recent trade to New York, has provided a particularly stark example of the conflict at play between privacy and openness. Despite a career plagued by injuries, Rose, the youngest player to ever win the NBA's Most Valuable Player award, has built a huge following of fans, underscored by his 2.45 million Twitter followers.
Rose and two friends, Randall Hampton and Ryan Allen, are accused in the lawsuit of sexually assaulting the woman in the early morning hours one day in August 2013. Rose and the woman had been in a relationship for a few years and, on the night in question, the woman has recounted going to a party with Rose, who was living in Los Angeles at the time.
Afterward, while drinking at Rose's house, the woman claims the men secretly drugged her. Hours later, after she had departed, the men drove to the woman's apartment. The woman alleges the men had sex with her while she was in an "incapacitated state of consciousness."
Rose and the others acknowledge they had sex with the woman, but say it was consensual.
The months of legal wrangling in the lead up to trial have been often ugly. Rose's attorneys, led by Mark Baute, have taken a gloves-off approach, saying the woman's demand for $21 million shows she is trying to shake down the wealthy Rose.
"This is not a rape case. It's pure and simple extortion by a plaintiff who wants to hide behind the cloak of anonymity while seeking millions in damages from a celebrity," Baute wrote in one of many filings with similar language.
Baute forced the issue of the woman's anonymity, arguing in June that the case should be dismissed or the woman forced to identify herself because Rose had been badly disadvantaged by her hidden identity. In trying to bolster his case, Baute said the woman had given up her claim of anonymity because she had posted provocative photos of herself using her name online.
Baute, who had the case moved to federal court after the woman initially filed it in state court, declined to respond to The Times about the woman's anonymity. Her attorney did not respond to calls for comment.
Fitzgerald rejected Baute's arguments, finding that Rose's fame heightened the likelihood that identifying the woman "could subject her to significant harassment and humiliation from the public." And the judge admonished Baute for his argument over the woman's online photos, saying they made her no less deserving of protection.
"Defendant Rose," the judge wrote, "appears to suggest that women who publicly portray themselves as 'sexual' are less likely to experience embarrassment, humiliation and harassment associated with gang rape. Such rhetoric has no place in this court."
In his ruling, Fitzgerald cited the 2003 sex assault case against Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant, who was accused by a 19-year-old Colorado hotel worker of raping her while she was at work at a mountain resort.
Despite efforts by the judge in those criminal proceedings to conceal her identity, the woman endured harassment and threats when her name leaked out and was spread widely.
In his ruling last month, however, Fitzgerald wrote that "as trial approaches, the public's interest in disclosure also increases." It is well established, he explained, that open courtrooms are an important element of journalists' and the general public's constitutional right to free speech. Keeping the woman's name secret, he said, would risk impinging those rights.
The judge added a second reason for his ruling. If jurors heard the woman referred to as Jane Doe, he said, they might infer that she was being protected because of harm caused by the defendants.
The woman's attorney made a last ditch effort last week to get the judge to reconsider, filing a letter from a Los Angeles police detective who said she was actively investigating the rape allegation for possible criminal charges and would like the woman's identity to remain secret while the inquiry continued.
In the same filing, which Fitzgerald has not ruled on, the attorney also submitted screen grabs from social media sites on which people discussed the case and named the woman, denigrating her decision to sue Rose. One post dismissed her as a "gold digger."
The harassment, the woman's lawyer argued, would likely grow worse if the woman's identity was made public in court.
