Police are investigating a virtual sexual assault of a girl’s avatar, the chair of the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners has said.
Donna Jones said she had learned that a complaint was made in 2023, triggering a police inquiry.
The virtual incident did not result in physical harm but caused “psychological trauma”, the Daily Mail has reported a source as saying. Police chiefs have called on platforms to do more to protect their users.
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The impact of the attack on the girl’s avatar was said to be heightened because of the immersive nature of the VR experience.
I can’t make up my mind on this one. On one hand we probably should make some rules etiquette and laws regarding VR, but on the other hand I made it through the Halo series just fine and was able to separate myself from what those people did to my corpse.
I would classify this as sexual harassment. It’s no different from being sent obscene videos over email. The gravity resides in that they’re sexual assault videos with the recipient being the victim.
This situation reminds me of the deepfake porn issue that’s been going around as well. Ofc there are differences, but mainly I mean the confusion around it of ‘how he hell do we categorize this’. I don’t know nearly enough to make a judgement here, but yours does sound reasonable imho.
(People have been saying this website isn’t super trustworthy, so I’m taking it with a grain of salt. Even if the story is fake - I’m not saying it is, for all I know it may be true, though I hope not - I imagine it’s still worthy of discussion as something that could happen.)
There’re*
Having been involved in something that was actually bad, I can say with certainty that there are enough rules already (in most places) that apply to these sorts of situations. Harassment and stalking crimes cover the sorts of things that need to be handled by police. If someone teabags you in Halo, or curses at you or says disgusting things in a voice chat, you either block them or shake your head and move on. If they follow you around through multiple lobbies, send/spam pictures or post/spray real pictures of genitalia (in places where it is not supposed to be, such as your inbox/cellphone/vr lobbies, obviously not talking about nsfw sites), those things are already crimes covered by harassment/stalking/sexting crimes.
There may be a few edge cases where someone can skirt the laws, but again, in my experience, the statutes are broad enough to catch almost everything you could imagine and want to be a crime.
Totally agree with you! If we are talking laws, it needs to be covered by general laws. Hopefully it already is wherever ppl are. It makes no sense to create specific laws for online games and VR games. Otherwise the next new tech needs its special law again, and the making of law is always late.
If we are talking etiquette, Netiquette exists.
I guess federation workers played a prank on me. Removed duplicate replies.
I was definitely left wondering why all those existed.
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Let me guess: cis-het white dude? Yeah. Tracks.
Maybe when an article says “The daily mail jas reported” we should completely ignore it until a better paper reports on it. Everything coming from the daily mail should be considered a lie.
I missed the Daily Mail bit. Thank you for pointing it out.
The amount of murder I have done in gaming. I’m going away for a long time boys💀
[the victim] suffered psychological trauma “similar to that of someone who has been physically raped”.
No she didn’t. I’m sure it wasn’t a pleasant experience, but let’s not over exaggerate the situation.
If it had been my avatar, I wonder if they’d be making that claim. As in, if it was literally the same avatar but I’d been wearing the headset.
Yeah but wild we don’t over exaggerate the situation, how will I get all the attention?
I’m not so sure I agree with you. If I had a choice between getting raped IRL or Virtually, I would choose Virtually any day.
But that doesn’t mean you couldn’t get PTSD or some other trauma from being virtually assaulted. As far as I know, the brain sees all trauma equality because brains are dumb like that. So I think it is possible the victim is experiencing similar trauma to being raped IRL.
We live in a clown world.
No we don’t.
Our world is complex and burying our heads in the sand about new frontiers of harassment does nothing good.
What does nothing good is diminishing what sexual assault actually means.
Please don’t kill people in Counter strike or they might get PTSD
The fact that this is even compared to real SA is so fucked up. At least on the internet or game you can leave, it’s not like your forced to endure the actions or behavior of other people.
the Daily Mail
Ah yes so file this under shit that never happened.
Assaulting someone in a VR game is still assault especially if they never consented.
Are you fucking kidding me?
They took cops off of real cases to work a VIRTUAL ASSAULT in a video game. (just harassment, not assault btw)
JFC I hope we fucking get nuked soon. We don’t deserve to live.
Can you at least agree that this is a case of harassment and cyber bullying?
Ah have you tried putting yourself in that person’s shoes at all and try to imagine how their experience might have felt like?
I don’t know about you, but if I was 16 and went into a VR environment, where you practically feel like you’re really there, with the intention to have some fun with friends, and a bunch of grown ass men started getting together and simulated a rape with explicit violent language, I would probably not feel very happy or secure. I’d probably log out feeling pretty dirty and uncomfortable. Basically the same kind of feeling you’d get from any form of sexual assault in real life.
What happened in that VR environment was done by real people who thought it was okay to sexually assault a teenage girl, even if it was virtual. They’re basically rape apologists and are enabling rape culture. Realizing the fact there are men like this is scary enough to be traumatized and never trust men again.
Did you read my comment or just go on a text block spree without finishing it?
For reference:
“… They took cops off of real cases to work a VIRTUAL ASSAULT in a video game. (just harassment, not assault btw)”
Pretending like this is a problem that requires police intervention is easily one of the most immature and incompetent things I’ve ever seen.
You know video games have moderators right?
For one, it doesn’t say that at all in the article.
Second, harassment and cyberbullying is a real case. Especially when it involves sexually explicit material or simulating sexual activity and the victim is a minor.
So yes, this is very much a real case.
You don’t have to socialize with those people.
You have the tools at your disposal to control who you interact with online.
I don’t know what platform they were using. And maybe in a VR setting, and with multiple characters, it’s a little difficult to find out who the perpetrators are.
When I play an online FPS game for example, I don’t always see our notice the names of the players I interact with.
And that’s beside the point anyway. That girl has the right to feel safe even in a VR setting where the aim of the platform is to simply interact with others as you would in real life. I don’t know why nobody here understands this.
What a joke.
Real crimes are being compared to vr “crimes”. Next will be thought crimes.
VR is immersive, but it isn’t that immersive, especially when it comes to user feedback
If it got that good vr would be in every household. Can’t wait to get a strangers finger up the bum.
More than just a finger probably
Finger and half?
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Every GTA player sweating bullets right now.
The victim was in an online ‘room’ with a large number of fellow users when the virtual assault by several adult men took place.
Taken from the DailyMail. Neither article has details on which VR game/app she was, nor what kind of “assault” it was. The dailymail says it was “on the metaverse”, but “metaverse” could be VRChat, Fortnite or fucking Second Life for all we know. Could’ve even been on fuckzuck’s metaverse, Horizon Worlds, but isn’t it the place where you don’t have a bottom half and other avatars are forced to stay the equivalent of 1.5m away from you at all times?
I just feel like this would set a negative precedent for interactions in online games. Idk tho, not a lawyer.
It’s harassment. The game or platform should ban or punish the user. This should be protected under free speech. It’s still disgusting though.
why would sexually harassing children fall under free speech? I agree with you that it’s not assault, but even in the absence of assault this behavior wouldn’t be protected speech in real life and it shouldn’t be protected speech online
It’s legally protected speech. In real life, you would get the shit knocked out of you, and rightfully so. In online, the most they can do is virtually beat them up or ban from the servers.
Edit: it depends on the severity of it too iirc. Saying “nice tits” isn’t as severe as “I’m going to rape the shit out of you”
You realize sexual harassment is illegal, right?
Actually, I didn’t know this before. I knew for sure it wasn’t allowed in the workplace or at school but didn’t know it was an actual federal law. Thanks for pointing that out.
The game should ban the offender but I can’t not think involving the police is a bit ridiculous and waste of resources.
I’m amazed at bothering to investigate
