By Clare Murphy BBC News Online

Bryant says that while he may be an adulterer, he is no rapist

But since a young woman accused the 24-year-old Los Angeles Lakers hero of raping her after she went to his hotel room, his name has become a staple fixture in both broadsheet analysis and tabloid stories, TV news as well as talkshows and radio programmes.

The case has, as one columnist notes, attracted more attention than the failure so far of the White House to provide evidence of Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction.

But it goes deeper than a mere obsession with celebrity and the irresistible scandal of a squeaky clean married father - who is to America what British footballer David Beckham is to much of the world - betraying his beautiful young wife.

The case has also opened a serious debate about how the country which coined the term "date rape" - an assault by an acquaintance rather than a complete stranger - now views allegations of rape in the murky context of the bedroom.

It has also raised the hugely controversial issue of whether women who file such damaging complaints should enjoy anonymity.

Naming names

The 19-year-old and Mr Bryant had sex after she went to his room in the Colorado hotel where he was staying.

If this case had happened 10 years ago it is more than likely that this girl concerned would have had a more sympathetic reception Maria Bevacqua Women's studies professor

The next day, she went to the police station to say she had been raped. Mr Bryant for his part has insisted that all activity had been consensual.

While Mr Bryant's name has been splashed across the American media as an alleged rapist, the press and broadcast media for the most part have abided by a self-imposed restriction on reporting the names of alleged rape victims.

This is designed to protect women from what is perceived to be the stigma of being sexually assaulted. Advocates say it encourages victims to report crimes.

But the anonymity of the alleged victim has become a topic of intense debate. Commentators - from reactionary pundits to left-wing academics - have been weighing in for the restriction to be lifted.

Some argue it is deeply unjust that the name of the alleged perpetrator can be dragged through the mud, while the accuser remains anonymous.

For others, the refusal to treat rape victims as one might adult victims of other crimes adds to the stigma of being raped rather than diminishing it, belonging to an age when a woman who was assaulted was seen as somehow tarnished.

"It is time we named the accuser as well as the accused," says Geneva Overholser, a journalism professor. "It's a journalistic aberration."

'Trashed'

The argument is, however, somewhat academic.

The name of Mr Bryant's accuser has been broadcast on a radio chatshow, and photographs and personal details have appeared on the internet, along with thousands of overwhelmingly unfriendly messages.

The judge in the case has issued a "decorum order", aimed at preventing media organisations from broadcasting the image or name of the alleged victim.

But while newspapers have not revealed her name, many details have hit the mainstream media about her life and hobbies, which have been seized on to portray her as an unstable attention seeker.

It is time we named the accuser as well as the accused Geneva Overholser Journalism professor

"I think it's possible for Kobe Bryant to get a fair trial, but the real issue is that the 'victim' will be so trashed by the time it takes place," says Laurie Levinson, a former federal prosecutor.

Backlash

There is no question that the woman has picked a tough fight with one of the most respected men in American sport, who, up to now, had a spotless reputation.

But her "trashing" may nonetheless seem somewhat out-of-place in a country where feminists in the 1980s and 1990s successfully pushed onto the national consciousness the notion that rape could happen to anyone, anywhere, and more often at the hands of acquaintances than strangers.

However by the late 1990s, a growing number of other female activists declared that their colleagues were exaggerating the prevalence of "date rape", and that their campaign was undermining gender equality by seeking to impose a Victorian-style moral code on women, whom they said were being consistently portrayed as victims.

"And they have been very successful in arguing this. There has definitely been a backlash against that brand of feminism," says Maria Bevacqua, a women's studies professor at Minnesota State University and the author of Rape on the Public Agenda.

"If this case had happened 10 years ago it is more than likely that the girl in question would have had a more sympathetic reception."

If convicted Mr Bryant faces a sentence of up to life in jail, the loss of his career and his multi-million-dollar sponsorship deals.