The thing that's bothering people is that it's a court order that limits the rights of the victim. If I lose my wallet and someone finds and returns it to me, I am free to publicly name and thank them. It seems wrong that if I am sexually assaulted instead, there is a court order preventing from doing the same thing, gagging me about my own (unwilling) experience.

I'm sure there's plenty of legal precedence for this kind of thing. I don't know much about law. But I'm not talking about the legal basis for the argument. I'm talking about how wrong the conclusion seems based on the human factors.

This gag order in question has no Constitutional basis. The idea of a gag order is to protect the 6th Amendment rights of defendants. The defendants pled guilty, therefor they're "Fair trial" rights are no longer subject to being violated. The girl has first amendment rights. There's plenty of case law on this issue -- it's just surprising to me that judges, especially in the lower, local courts seem to think that precedent doesn't apply to them.

In what civilized society are criminals tried, convicted, and executed on the basis of public opinion?

I'm not saying that this particular case is worthy of a gag order, but the theoretical justification seems completely sound to me.

I also find your appeal to "human factors" to be rather vague. Human factors often include things like blind rage and thirst for vengeance. These are not things to build a legal system (or really, a society) on.

Don't be so hyperbolic. We're talking about blame, not execution, not any kind of punishment. And aren't they already convicted by the court system?

It's a common idiom in the English language: http://www.usingenglish.com/reference/idioms/judge,+jury+and...

My point is exactly that they are convicted and sentenced by the court system, not the public. For this reason the public have no need to learn their names in very prejudicial cases.

That said, this would have to be very strictly applied as it does interact problematically with the first amendment. As I said, I'm not sure this specific case warrants it.

You're not serious are you ?

Have you not seen the many cases of vigilantism when people's names/addresses have been posted online.

There have been some terrible situations on Reddit and 4chan.

That sort of mob vigilantism is loosely coupled with actual guilt. It's more about tossing out a name and some kind of accusation, with people only sometimes checking if it's true before acting. Naming people at all is a problem, the additional factor of guilt is far less of one.