Why Victoria Wants to Stop Letting Convicted Rapists Hide Their Names
Victorian Premier Ben Carroll has promised to change the state's laws so that convicted rapists can no longer keep their names secret. If his government is re-elected in November, he says he will amend the Open Courts Act to ban what are called suppression orders for convicted rapists. The pledge comes after growing pressure over defendants using mental health reasons to hide who they are during long court cases.
Carroll, joined by Attorney-General Sonya Kilkenny on August 11, said the government wants to close every loophole that accused people use to hide their identities in Victoria's courts. He said suppression orders were meant to protect victims, not convicted rapists (The Guardian).
A suppression order is a court rule that stops the media from reporting certain details about a case, like the name of the person accused. Think of it as a legal curtain drawn around part of a trial. The goal is to protect people who might be harmed by the information getting out, but critics say the curtain is being pulled for the wrong reasons.
The push for change follows two cases that drew public attention. Ralph Carr, a well-known entertainment manager, was found guilty last month of two counts of rape and one count of sexual assault. His name had been kept secret for almost three years on mental health grounds, and was revealed only after he was convicted. In December, Tom Silvagni, son of AFL footballer Stephen Silvagni, was convicted of rape. His name had been hidden for 18 months, also on mental health grounds, and was made public only after the conviction.
In both cases, the accused used psychiatric evidence arguing that being named in the media could lead them to harm themselves. Carr's lawyers got their order in 2023 under Section 18(1)(c) of the Open Courts Act, which restricts reporting (ABC News).
The law dates back to 2013. It allows judges to issue suppression orders for safety reasons, but it is only recently that accused people have started arguing that they need protection from harming themselves. Robert Clark, the former attorney general who wrote the law, has said the safety provision was meant to protect people from threats of violence from others, not from their own psychological distress (The Guardian).
A meeting at the University of Melbourne on August 11 brought together lawyers, journalists, and academics to discuss fixing the Open Courts Act, partly because of the Silvagni and Carr cases. A separate review is already underway to look at how suppression orders are used, including how long they last, when they are granted temporarily, and whether mental health should be a valid reason for them. The Conversation has previously suggested a set of reforms including time limits on orders, limits on mental health grounds, restrictions on fake names, and publishing the reasoning behind orders (The Conversation). The state government had already been asking for advice on suppression order laws after several media outlets complained about a tactic being used to shield defendants (AAP).
Both major political parties are on board, at least in words. Shadow Attorney-General James Newbury said the Coalition would stop the misuse of suppression orders, full stop. On August 12, the Victorian government introduced a broad bill to parliament that also ends the use of good character references at sentencing, pointing to a wider push for openness in the courts (The Guardian).
The broader context here helps explain why this issue is gaining attention now. The law was written in a time before this particular strategy existed. Using psychiatric evidence about self-harm risk to get a suppression order seems to be a relatively new legal tactic, not something the people who wrote the law saw coming. The gap between what the law was meant to do and how it is actually being used is what the current review and political promises are trying to fix.
There are real tensions involved. Suppression orders exist partly to keep court proceedings fair and to protect the people involved, including those who bring complaints. Banning them for convicted rapists raises a hard question: what about the period between when someone is charged and when they are found guilty? During that time, the person has not been convicted, and publishing their name could affect the jury or make a fair trial harder. The government's promise covers convicted individuals, but the ongoing review is also looking at temporary orders and the reasons they are granted, which means the changes could go further.
The mental health reason is tricky on its own. Psychiatric evidence that someone might take their own life is not something courts can ignore, and they have a duty to take that risk seriously. The challenge for lawmakers is telling the difference between a real, immediate safety risk and what Clark and others describe as using claims of psychological distress to put off being publicly named. How any new law makes that distinction, or whether it removes the mental health reason altogether, will decide whether the reform holds up when tested in practice.
What is clear is that Victoria's system for keeping court information secret is being questioned from every direction: political, academic, journalistic, and legal. Whether the November election leads to a government willing to turn these promises into law, and what shape that law takes, will affect the balance between open courts and the well-being of defendants in one of Australia's largest legal systems for years to come.
