We, as a group, receive DMs, Facebook messages and various types of correspondence from victims almost every single week from across the country that ask “Do I have a publication ban? How do I find out?” or “I have a publication ban, but my court case ended four years ago. How do I take it off?” No one understands how to remove them, how to figure out if they have one, or how to find help.
I am not a lawyer, but I've been very fortunate to be connected with lawyers like Megan, Robin and others to whom we refer victims because we simply can't do that work. It's so prevalent, but it's so hard to even know how they're being put in place. The ability for someone to just get help and figure out what's going on with their own identity.... It's absurd, honestly.
As Megan mentioned, it's very casual. If you're a victim, there's nothing casual about being told that you can't talk about your own experience. It's casual for everyone else except for us. It's extremely prevalent. It doesn't make sense how the current regime works. We can't keep doing the work of helping victims ourselves. The law just needs to be changed and clarified so that you take the work away from us, because it's not sustainable. It also shouldn't be done in the shadows because people fear criminalization or have various issues in accessing justice.