Cathy Young's Boston Globe column today, Those accused of rape have rights, too, explains the importance of the rights of the accused in a sexual assault case--and using recent high-profile cases as examples, shows how overbroad application of rape shield laws are unjust.

Rape is a despicable crime, and an accusation of rape should be taken very seriously -- but the rights of the accused should be rigorously protected. After the 1997 trial of sportscaster Marv Albert, defending the judge's decision to admit compromising information about Albert's sexual past but not about his accuser's, feminist attorney Gloria Allred decried "the notion that there's some sort of moral equivalency between the defendant and the victim." Yet as long as the defendant hasn't been convicted, he and the victim are indeed moral equals in the eyes of the law.

It's frightening to put oneself in the place of a sexual assault victim who finds the intimate details of her life paraded in public. But it's at least as terrifying to imagine that you, or your husband or brother or son, could be accused of sexual assault and denied access to relevant information that could make the difference between guilt and innocence.