All crimes have a tendency of damaging a person’s life if they’re merely publicly accused of them, but there is a definite impression that accusations of rape are more readily believed by large swaths of the public and can be more damaging than most. If you hear of someone accused of murder and he’s then found not guilty, in most situations, people seem to accept that (exceptions exist, such as OJ Simpson where a rather sizable amount of people remain convinced he was guilty, whether rightly or wrongly).
With rape and other sexual crimes including pedophilia and molestation, there appears to be a very distinct split between people who will absolutely believe any halfway credible-sounding accusation and even if the person is found not guilty or not even prosecuted, simply attribute that to sexism and other ‘rapists are rarely convicted’ explanations…and the people who refuse to believe rape took place under almost any but the most egregiously provable circumstances. An accusation of these sorts of crimes without evidence does, therefore, appear to be more damaging than an accusation of murder or armed robbery, etc, both in the short and long term.
Of course, I’m only talking about how it seems. I don’t know of any actual studies that try to determine whether someone accused but not convicted of a sexual crime actually finds their life more damaged than someone accused but not convicted of other ‘types’ of crime.
That said, I’m not sure what the solution is. I’ve thought about this in the context of all crime, but it’s especially applicable if sexual crimes indeed do harm a person’s life to a greater degree to have the accusation happen. We can’t very well make all criminal and court proceedings secret, because that would require that we place absolute trust in the justice system, and it never have the oversight of public knowledge. If we permit publication of the accused at any point before conviction, then what have we accomplished, really?
Plus, at least in the US, we have the problem that the first amendment makes it very difficult to restrict the media’s ability to publicize an accusation of this sort. It is perhaps plausible that making libel and slander cases easier to win in such a situation might help, but it’s hard to say if that wouldn’t make other things worse.
I do, however, think that if someone is going to be accused of something, their accuser should be named. The media really shouldn’t announce that someone has been accused without naming their accuser. It just feels like a step too far in making it impossible to defend oneself in the court of public opinion.