"Legislation introduced by Del. Rob Bell, R-Albemarle County, after a rape victim was sued in Charlottesville is advancing through a House of Delegates committee, so far without opposition.

Bell's bill would protect crime victims from being sued based on misidentification of a suspect. The measure won unanimous approval of the House Courts of Justice Civil Laws Subcommittee late Monday.

'I think it will accomplish some good things,' Del. David J. Toscano, D-Charlottesville, said after voting for Bell's bill. 'It will protect people like the victim in Charlottesville.'

Bell and Toscano said the bill would encourage people who are victimized or witness a crime to come forward and try to make an honest identification of a suspect.

'What we are trying to do is avoid any chilling effect' from fear of a lawsuit, Bell said. 'It will protect crime victims from honest mistakes.'

Toscano said the bill would not help the 23-year-old sexual assault victim sued in December by Christopher Lynn Matthew. 'It won't protect her specifically because there is already a lawsuit,' he said.

Matthew filed an $850,000 defamation lawsuit against the former University of Virginia law student barely three months after she told police he was the man who sexually assaulted her Sept. 3 as she walked home from a party on Sunset Avenue. DNA evidence later cleared Matthew and led police to arrest another man, John Henry Agee, who is awaiting trial.

Bell said he drafted the bill after reading an account of the lawsuit in The Daily Progress.

He said he was 'concerned that some people might not bring charges at all' if they are afraid of being sued for an honest identification that turns out to be in error.

Toscano agreed and called the measure 'a good bill' after it was amended in the subcommittee. 'I was concerned that there would be a chilling effect on victims.'

UVa law professor Anne M. Coughlin said rape is already the most underreported crime in America. If it became standard for men to file this type of lawsuit, she said, fewer such crimes would be reported.

The crime victim named in the suit filed in Charlottesville has ended her studies at UVa and now lives in Arlington.

She testified in November at the preliminary hearing for the suspect now awaiting trial.

'I recognize him as the man who raped me,' she testified. She added that she had been in 'a state of duress' the night she initially identified Matthew, who stood in the headlights of a police car.

Bell said his bill is supported by the state commonwealth's attorneys association and the Virginia Sexual and Domestic Violence Action Alliance. He said anyone who intentionally lies in identifying a suspect still would be subject to a lawsuit." (Bob Gibson, The Daily Progress, February 1, 2006)