Perhaps the saddest element of the Ched Evans case is the effect on future victims of sexual offences.

Footballer Evans was convicted on Friday of raping a girl in a hotel room who was too drunk to give consent. The Sheffield United and Wales striker, who is going to appeal, was jailed for five years.

Within minutes of the verdict Twitter was awash with blame - not for Evans, but for the victim. She was accused of ‘asking for it’, inviting trouble by getting drunk and - ludicrously - derailing Sheffield United’s promotion challenge.

Within days police were looking into whether she had been named on social networking sites and the club was investigating tweets about the case reportedly made by Evans’ team-mate.

To compound the hideousness of this episode, two days after his conviction Evans was named by his fellow professionals in the League One team of the year. Surely someone could have foreseen how inappropriate his inclusion would be?

Rape support charities are understandably horrified. Rape Crisis (England and Wales) says that only 10% of rapes and sexual assaults of women and girls are currently reported. The charity says the aftermath of Evans’ conviction highlights what it has known for some time: ‘that harmful myths about sexual violence, and those who experience and perpetrate it, are still deeply ingrained within our society’.

Rape complainants have the legal right to lifelong anonymity and the breaching of that right is a criminal offence.

In the age of social media this will be increasingly hard to enforce but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. There are means of tracking down Twitter and Facebook accounts - for the sake of all victims, it’s worth using them now.

Women who report a sexual offence already have to face the ordeal of a court case and often the suggestion that they somehow encouraged the crime, either by walking alone or the way they dress. It would be a tragedy if their anonymity was threatened as well.