This is largely because confidentiality in sex-crime reporting prevents the media from shining a light on the crime, inhibits institutional memory of repeated assailants, and prevents scrutiny of whether a court, college, or police precinct is doing better or worse at handling such cases. As a result, serious crimes can be swept under the rug – at Yale and at every other private US university I have ever visited (public universities are less free to conceal crime data) – in the guise of “protecting the victims.”