Anna mentioned Savannah Dietrich in the morning news—she's the 17-year-old rape victim who's making national headlines for defying a judge's gag order to Tweet the names of her attackers, and now faces jail time herself for the offense.

While I admire Dietrich's bravery in revealing her identity, and the guts it took to "not [protect] anyone that made my life a living Hell," as she put it, by Tweeting their names, the fact that she had to take both of these steps highlights how the judicial process is failing rape victims—and the lengths some social-media-savvy women are willing to take justice into their own hands to get their stories out. Via Salon:

Now, young victims like Dietrich are "reporting" the assault directly to the people who need the information most—other women living in these rapists' communities. And they’re risking their own names and reputations in order to bring their assailants out into the open. In 2010, 19-year-old American University student Chloe Rubenstein took to Facebook and Twitter to out two men on campus she said had victimized several of her friends (“ATTENTION WOMEN,” she wrote. “They are predators and will show no remorse for anyone.”) In 2007, a group of women at Portland’s Lewis & Clark College, led by sophomore Helen Hunter, created a Facebook group calling one of their classmates a “Piece of S—- Rapist.” When the administration caught wind, it suspended the man for just a semester. But five years later? Google his name, and the online rape allegations still register as the fourth hit.

To be clear, this is vigilante justice. If it hasn't happened already, sooner or later someone's going to be falsely accused of sexually assaulting another person via Twitter or Facebook or whatever and found guilty in the fickle court of social media. And no, that's not right. But as it stands, sexual assault victims have adopted this method as the imperfect solution to an even bigger, more egregious and systemic problem: Navigating a judicial system that seems callously stacked against them. Punishing women like Dietrich for speaking out isn't the solution; fixing the system that alienates them is.