When Lauren Ingram posted the first of her tweets exposing the identity of her alleged rapist, it felt like "a little act of power and resistance" after two years of feeling like she was getting nowhere.
"I've talked about this before but not in detail," the 27-year-old Sydney journalist wrote in that first post. "So here is it: in April 2015 I was raped by a man who is a Greens member."
The man had been a friend of Ingram's. On the night in question, he invited her to his house, where what began as consensual sex turned into what she described as a violent assault.
Ingram named him, tagging his username, in a later tweet.
While many applauded her bravery, not everyone agreed social media was the place to name and shame a man over allegations that had not been tested in court.
But Ingram was fed up with the official channels. For two years she had complained to the police and the NSW Greens, where her alleged rapist was employed — and felt she had been thwarted at every turn.
Police had lost interest in her case, she believed, and told her that her hospital records had been permanently destroyed, which would have made her case much weaker if it went to court.
But Background Briefing has discovered these files still exist — a revelation that Ingram said reinforced her decision to go public with her alleged attacker's identity.
Taking matters into their own hands
Ingram is part of a bigger movement of young women who are willing to take the law into their own hands in sexual assault cases.
Despite police warnings that public shaming could backfire, women across Australia are joining private Facebook groups that share stories about which men to avoid.
"I'm a part of the secret underground feminist mafia that tells all of my friends, and even just women I meet ... about who the bad guys are, who the rapists are," said Anna, a member of one group like this.
"The system isn't set up to help me. It's set up to help him. This is our own system."
Anna said she could think of five men she regularly told her friends to avoid. Even within the last month, she said, she'd cut a man out of her social circle after hearing about his ugly history.
It's this kind of warning that Sydney writer Erin Riley wishes she'd given Ingram.
A month before Ingram's alleged rape, Riley said she had a similar experience with the same mutual acquaintance: she describes initially consenting, before the sex turned violent and intimidating.
Riley didn't go to hospital after it happened. She didn't go to police straight away. For weeks afterwards, she went back and forth between denial and feeling deeply violated.
Now, she wishes she'd said something. "I felt so guilty. I felt like if I had recognised it and if I'd said something earlier, if I'd warned her..." Riley said. "I didn't."
Police warn of dangers of speaking out
Some described Ingram's move to go public as vigilantism. She doesn't totally disagree.
"It's almost like taking back the power, taking back whatever you can, to put against the system that isn't working," she said. "It's like a little act of power and resistance."
This reasoning troubles Detective Superintendent Linda Howlett, who heads the New South Wales sex crimes squad. At the end of the day, she said, it would not help get an offender arrested or charged.
"It could have had the potential to compromise the evidence that could be obtained," she said.
"The other thing we certainly don't want is for that social media comment to be out before a judge and jury, because it could place doubt on the actual circumstance the investigation or anything the victim might say."
And then there's the risk that the accused rapist could sue the rape victim for what they've said online.
"The victim could be leaving themselves open to civil prosecution by the offender who's actually committed the offence against them," Superintendent Howlett said.
"Until a person is actually convicted, they're innocent in the eyes of the law of that particular offence."
The night of Lauren's alleged rape
Over the course of her tweets, and in her interview with Background Briefing, Ingram laid out her account of what the man, who she had once considered a friend, did to her.
Bruises are visible on a young woman's shoulders and neck.
The night began with him texting her, asking if she wanted to hang out at his house and eat pizza. When she arrived at his place, there was no pizza, but he'd bought some gin. Conversation led to kissing and then consensual sex.
But Ingram said it wasn't long before he started getting rough. When she felt him biting her, she told him it hurt and asked him to stop.
"I think I said stop four or five times, and he grabbed my arm and was holding me down onto the bed and just kept going," she said.
Then, she said, he hit her, and held her down on the bed when she tried to get up.
"I was terrified ... fear and pain were the only things in my head. I'd never experienced anything like that before in terms of real fear," she said.
