The Sexual Assault Survivor Fighting to Protect Victims’ Identities

"I was screaming. He told me he'd kill me if I didn't stop," she tells Broadly. "Then two men appeared from nowhere and pulled him off me."

They were, miraculously, off-duty police officers. Mel's attacker was arrested and charged with sexual assault later that night. The Crown Prosecution Service subsequently increased the charge to attempted rape, for which he would eventually be sentenced to seven years in prison.

At 4 AM, a policeman read Mel the indictment, which included both parties' names. "I said I wished they hadn't told me his name. I wanted him to remain nameless to me," she recalls. "I then joked that at least he obviously wouldn't learn who I am."

Actually, he would, came the reply.

So began a battle that's ultimately taken Mel (or Melanie H, as she has been called in the press) to the House of Lords in Parliament, where she's heading up a draft amendment to the Policing and Crime Bill. It would prevent police from giving the name of a victim of a serious violent offence committed by a stranger to the person accused of the crime.

Under current police procedure, perpetrator and victim are told the contents of the official charge sheet which bears both their names. Even—and this is the crucial part—in cases of stranger rape, when the two are entirely unknown to one another. These cases make up 10 percent of all adult rapes.

Mel was incredulous. "Just a few hours previously I genuinely thought I was going to be raped and killed by a stranger. The fact that he now knew my name felt very wrong."

This happened in February 2014. Weeks after the attack, Mel's heart momentarily stopped—a likely symptom of post traumatic stress disorder, her doctors say. She collapsed onto a radiator, leaving her with third-degree burns across her left buttock. Eighteen months later, with the trial and two skin flap operations behind her, she could finally start to work on changing the law.

So, what's in a name? In the near-mythical pre-internet age, someone could look you up in the phone book if they had your name. If you didn't like that you could change your number and go ex-directory. Not great, but not catastrophic either.

These days our professional and personal lives are lived largely online. Armed simply with a name, you can easily find out everything from a person's address to which school they went to. Try Googling yourself, if you haven't already—it can be a disconcerting experience. Harry Fletcher, co-director of voice4victims, the advocacy group that drafted Mel's amendment, is unequivocal. Current police procedure "causes victims to be terrified that the perpetrator will find them via social media and cause them further violence."

It's a view shared by Detective Inspector Tracey Miller from the London borough of Southwark. "The internet's changed a lot of things in the last decade. Police procedure regarding victim protection just hasn't caught up. Stalkers don't hide behind bushes these days, they stalk from the privacy of their own homes." All they need is your name.

As an actress, Mel felt the implications of her exposed identity more keenly than most. "My name tells you where and when I'm working, everything. I realized I had to eradicate myself online as much as I possibly could, and that involved changing my stage name." It wasn't an easy decision. "My name is my business. I built a reputation for myself at drama school and during the years that followed. That online footprint of my work means a lot to casting directors. The actress I formed six months ago has very little experience."

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Mel began to dig. Her first task was to get to the bottom of her own case. She distinctly remembered police telling her that they'd revealed her name to her attacker, but it was a while before she got that confirmed. Then, of the 18 London police boroughs that responded to her question about a theoretical stranger rape case, ten confirmed that the victim's ID would be made available to the alleged attacker. Eight were unsure. "They all said different things which was deeply worrying," says Mel.

Before taking things further, Mel wanted to make sure that she wasn't "kicking up a huge fuss" over something that had only affected her. She published a Facebook post asking people who'd been through similar ordeals to get in touch. It was shared over 500 times. Then the messages began to arrive.

One woman, who'd been raped by a man after he offered to help when she fell in the street, told Mel that "the fact he knows my full name and details is something I have always hated and makes me regret going to the police. It would have been safer for me if I just hadn't reported it." Another wrote simply, "Your post summed up the reasons I didn't go to the police."

The irony inherent in current police policy isn't lost on Mel. British newspapers are banned from reporting the names of victims of sexual assault, and victims can request to give evidence behind a screen, all in the service of "victim protection." The fact that police routinely provide perpetrators with their victims' full names is a glaring anomaly in a process that has otherwise good intentions.

As for the government's position, Mel says she has received polite—but ultimately dismissive—responses from former Justice Ministers Chris Grayling and Michael Gove. They could sympathize with her concerns, but insisted that Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, as Mel puts it, "enshrines the right of the accused to know the identity of the person accusing them." Case closed. For her, "that simply wasn't good enough."

Baroness Cohen, one of the proposal's most vocal supporters in the House of Lords, agrees.

"What happened to Mel is unforgivable. It's absolutely idiotic to think there's any use in revealing the identity in cases like these." Speaking before the House of Lords in October, Mel outlined a number of alternative ways to identity a victim to a perpetrator "that don't have any lasting traumatic consequences." These include solutions as simple as using a photograph instead of a name, and cross-checking email and phone records when it's not immediately clear whether victim and perpetrator are known to each other.

So, the time has come. Mel's proposed amendment will go to a final vote in the Lords on Monday. It's got strong cross-bench support, and has met with no opposition from police. The only possible stumbling block is semantics: ensuring that the wording won't impinge on a suspect's right to a fair trial. If the Lords does give the amendment the green light, it'll then be up to the UK government—and, possibly later, MPs in the House of Commons—to approve it before it becomes law.

But even if it doesn't pass this time Mel is determined to eventually banish this especially pernicious piece of police procedure. "Somehow I just know I won't let this go. We were complete strangers. That's how we should have remained."