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.
…
The impact of the attack on the girl’s avatar was said to be heightened because of the immersive nature of the VR experience.
Everyone is focused on if there should be legal repercussions for this, and while that’s valid, there’s another point to make.
It’s that sexual assault, rape, sexual harassment, etc. is so heinously awful, that even in this watered down, synthetic, polygon avatar VR version of it is enough to seriously harm someone.
Being made to feel as if you’re worthless, and just a piece of meat to be ogled and used for others perverted pleasure, is so fucking terribly awful, that the Nintendo 64 version will leave you forever changed for the worse.
It’s so funny that we as society are totally fine with vr murder, but vr sexual harassment is “trauma”.
PTSD from being shot at in a VR game. Can’t wait
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The fuck are you on about?
Actually we see this happen in Tabletop RP. What might not be mentioned in the articles like this is if you are in a role playing game senario your avatar has it’s own sort of history and sunk investment that people can project a fair amount of themselves and a sense of their own personhood and agency on. When someone is raped in an TTRPG senario there is zero visual or haptic element at play… But that continuity of character means that the episode, consequences and status as a victim is now a part of their character’s personal history that you as the player need to reckon with in regards to other players. It is treated as an event that actually happened by other people who were participating in that space so unless there is a canonical reset (which oftentimes isn’t enough to fully rewind the impact on the player) Even if the players never mention it again in play it’s something that canonically happened which means at all points forward it is relevant in play and the not mentioning it isn’t “this didn’t happen” it’s “the characters/players involved are trying to bury this and pretend it didn’t happen”. A lot of people put in this position have described feeling forced to be subjected to rather sordid intentions that while not directly projected on the real person behind the character are still impacted an abstraction of their personhood and it can shake their faith in the empathy and care other people in the space have towards them.
It creates a unique issue that murdering a character doesn’t. Murdering a character is something the brain is primed to see as fiction. One doesn’t have to ponder how someone would get on with the business of living afterwards. You are dead. The player might mourn the loss or not depending on how much personal investment but they don’t tend to treat it as themselves dying. More like that’s something that happened to a friend or something of an investment of time and energy. A good character death leaves a story behind or a lot of rpgs have revolving door afterlives so the stakes are inherently lower.
However there isn’t a take backsies situation for sexual assault so it can feel very much like suddenly having to deal with a very present mental simulation of how you the player would deal with that happening to you if it were in real life. You are placed in a position to advocate for your needs against a lot of pushback. People often trivialize what happened which gives the impression that if something like that actually did happen to you a lot less people would have your back then you would hope because even when the stakes are nil people will be perfectly fine trying to protect the person or people who did you dirty.
A lot of folks put in that position find their actual ability to participate in the hobby impacted as they either leave their established social circles for how shit being placed in that situation them feel or they become table shy, being suspicious of game masters and players they can’t trust not to pull the same stunt. A gaming group can very easily fall apart if a player character is raped inside the narrative of the game which has created a rise in the use of safety tools to make sure no one at the table gets actually hurt.
Bottom line is adult men were engaging sexually with a minor online. Doesn’t really matter if it was VR or what. Hang them all.
This place needs more girls.
The comments here are appalling. So many rape apologists. This is what rape culture is all about.
Y’all should be ashamed.
I don’t think you meant “appealing”.
No I meant appalling. Stupid autocorrect.
This was the final straw for me to leave lemmy. I tried to give it a chance, even with all the radical idiots around, but it’s not worth it.
Lemmy will be known for its extremist users and will never break critical mass.
If you take the dumbest assholes of reddit and group them up, you get Lemmy.
LOL random off topic attack message from an insecure person.
Sure bud.
I love how you guys try to wrongfully profile me because I call out what I see.
Did you feel adressed by me or what’s the reason for this?
Why are you still here? You said that you leaving
Because you ping me.
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I clearly didn’t mean the commenter calling the horrible comments out, it was a follow up.
But thanks for confirming that the dumbest assholes and most easily impressionable users of reddit are here.
People here have the same resistance to disinformation and propaganda as the MAGA crowd. You will follow and believe every bullshit source as long as it fits your narrative. (Not related to this post, it’s a general observation I made)
You guys are getting radicalised and it’s so unbelievably easy.
Looks like you’re not used to being around people who disagree with you.
Bullshit.
Okay.
That counts as agreement to me. I like you now.
JFC… 🤦♂️
Do you even know what an incel is?
Honestly, I’ve had worst experiences on Reddit. The communities I’m part of are generally pretty chill. But, they’re generally smaller ones with a few users.
When you end up on bigger communities like this one with a larger user base, you’re bound to find a larger sample of… questionable people with questionable opinions and values. And they’re usually the more vocal ones making it seem like the community is made up of rotten people.
It’s not even about this post, it’s mysogynist, isn’t the first time I’ve seen it and won’t be the last.
It’s that too many people on here fell for conspiracy theories, are believing things too easy and also have very radicalised mindsets. Just one example, I read some “thought police” bullshit comments on here way too often and in every topic. Also all the questionable sources I see on here that only get questioned when it doesn’t fit the narrative. I’ve had a past with conspiracy theories and I notice a lot of people eating them up on here. There’s no nuance in the comments, just extreme opinions. There’s also a lot of antisemitism on here thinly pretending to be critics to Israel, while commenting on disinformation posts sourced by Qatari government. When Formula 1 is in Qatar they flip their shit, when the source is from a Qatari state owned source, they rush to uncritically believe it.
What’s the biggest community on here anyways, 50k? That is already incredibly small and shouldn’t be as extreme as it is, unless the base line has lost their marbles.
The sorting algos in the comments also make it too easy to manipulate old and established posts that are already kind of dead, turning them from extreme left to far right in the visible spots. Sure, extreme left is better than extreme right, but generally extremism is a mind virus and I don’t want to surround myself with it.
I don’t like it here, and I don’t think I will go out of my way to search for tiny places that are acceptable enough to excuse this.
Have a nice day.
What, are you high? It’s offensive to compare this to rape, it completely trivialises it. To force someone to participate in the physical act of sexual intercourse against their will, that’s rape. Often with the threat or use of physical violence to ensure compliance. This will never be remotely adjacent to that until we’re all wearing haptic VR speculums in every orifice.
I’m not saying it’s rape. The article even states it’s not considered actual rape because according to the laws where this is being applied, there needs to be a physical contact.
But it sure as hell is sexual harassment, which is a form of abuse. Furthermore it was done to an underage victim, which makes it even worse. It’s perfectly acceptable to involve the police to investigate and file a complaint against the agressors.
Can you point to a comment that is highly upvoted and is a rape apologist?
No. The simple fact that you’re asking this question is proof that you’re acting in bad faith.
I’m done with this thread.
Can you provide evidence for your extraordinary claim?
No I can provide no evidence for my claim therefore I’m right.
You get why this makes no sense right?
It’s your problem if you want to go off in a big huff because the rest of the universe doesn’t conform to your imaginations. Next time try to get pissy about something that’s actually happening.
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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.
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.
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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.
Bro what
You didn’t have to underline my point, but go ahead, I guess. Bro.
I’m not sure anyone here knows what your point is, could you explain?
I give 0 fucks about imaginary internet points, and the downvoters are only showing their collective bareass lack of ability to read for comprehension, but sure, I’ll bite:
…in my experience, the statutes are broad enough to catch almost everything you could imagine and want to be a crime.
Just screams in blithe confidence most often reserved for the privilege of white, cis-het males. To say nothing of the presumption that simply labeling something as a crime insures enforcement (aka “justice”), which would certainly stem from a lifelong pattern of that same ignorance re: one’s own privilege.
Carry on with your echo chamber, citizens. You’re doing great.
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So…many…teabags
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*
crouch crouch crouch
Dip dip potato chip
It’s a little silly at this stage, but I think there needs to be a legal framework around this thing now because eventually, our games will be realistic enough and immersive enough that this could become a serious issue.
You’re joking right? Read about Ellen Page and the Beyond:Two Souls controversy.
Shit’s already here. It’s not just a little silly anymore. And with those AI deep fakes floating around, anyone can become a pornstar without even knowing about it.
People already killing themselves for fake rape allegations and social media pariah-ism, what now that fake porn with you in it can be made at any time?
This shit’s a disaster in the making, not just a little silly.
This is the best comment in this thread so far. You make some excellent points.
What that girl experienced is definitely a form of harassment. And the VR part just made it more real than simple texts or photos. Which I think should be considered as a form of psychological assault.
And how fucked up must men and rape culture be that a girl can’t even feel safe in a fucking virtual reality setting. Seriously, that’s a big WTF. This is just sad.
I’d say it’s more expected. People feel fat less social restraints when online. VR is no different.
Glad to see these opinions. A lot of this thread is full of ignorant people.
I think they need to go outside.
“I think they shouldn’t have worn such a short skirt.”
How about we don’t blame people for others sexually harassing or assaulting them?
Especially when they’re trying to have some harmless fun.
Just block and report, it’s that easy, if you want to continue being in the situation.
And if the game doesn’t have that option? There’s no legal requirement to have that option. Maybe there should be?
The reporting/blocking features are done at the OS level, not in game.
I have never seen a ‘block and report’ feature on any OS. And there is certainly no requirement for games to use it if there were.
You mean the harassers, right? They were the ones ruining the fun.
Absolutely not! That’s absurd. You can’t virtually rape someone or virtually assault someone. You can always just look away, remove the headset, or turn off the pc. You can always instantly remove yourself from the situation. You are never in a position of danger. You are never in any way being harmed. The police should arrest the person that called them for wasting their time.
You can always hang up the phone if you’re getting repeatedly harassed on the phone too. That doesn’t make it any less harassment. Of course it doesn’t rise to the level of physical rape. That doesn’t mean it isn’t (intentionally) psychologically damaging. And, as I said, it needs to be done before it gets a lot more immersive, not because of the way things are right now. It could very well not be so easy to instantly remove yourself in the future.
I have a feeling that this isint the case of people repeatedly targeting an individual every time they are online. Seems like it was something that happened once, and that’s not harassment. That’s joking around.
Nah man. Rape is no joke. Especially not to a LOT of women.
You can’t be raped through a screen though
No. But a simulation of a rape can leave you feeling the same psychological trauma. Or at the very least feel completely disgusted with yourself and can lead to serious depression and maybe worse.
Why is it so hard for you guys to understand that people have the right to feel safe, even online, and not feel like there are people out there with a rapist mentality?
I’m not talking about this case in particular. I’m talking about the need to establish a legal framework before it becomes such a problem that everyone wonders why there isn’t a law against it.
We have managed fine this far. Nothing new. Police can stay out of video games.
Yes, we managed this far at he immersiveness and realism level of games so far. Eventually, and this is really the goal for a lot of people, games will be so realistic and immersive that you’ll feel like you’re actually there. And that is a big problem when it comes to sexual harassment. So maybe we should make sure that we’re prepared.
Hate to tell you but things can be considered harassment even if “it only happened once”
Is this your first time in a video game? People seem to think that their feelings are the police’s problem. It’s weird af. You don’t have the right to never be annoyed or upset.
Yeah but I am assuming you are an adult?
Kids get pulled into things like this and dont just remove the headset, they are much more malleable than a grown adult.The question is, shouldnt their parents be supervising them? Perhaps their parents dont even know about these online worlds filled with people? Did the parents buy them VR without any research into what you can do with it? There’s a lot of education that needs doing for both children and adults concerning online safety, more and more so as the online world advances.
That’s the parent’s fault for letting them play something without adult supervision.
Little Kids just shouldn’t be using this stuff, or should at least be supervised. Young adults can handle trash talk and gamer bs lol. This is such a non issue that people are just grasping at straws to try and make an issue it’s insane.
It’s an issue if kids can get a hold of this stuff and access it, yes. Parenting is the main problem, I agree, but not every parent is competent enough to look out for this kind of stuff, also this stuff is often heavily marketed towards children.
I think adults sexually harrassing children online is an issue, if you don’t, then I don’t know what to say.
I mean what is sexual harassment in a game? Saying something vulgar? Getting close to their avitar? That’s not sexual harassment to me.
I don’t know if this is true, but based on what I could find on google, cyber bullying is illegal in some places, including most US states (again, not sure about that, please correct me if I’m wrong). My point is, it’s not a new idea to get the law involved in a situation regarding online harassment. A victim could probably avoid it by logging off, but the legal precedent seems to be that they shouldn’t be expected to. That seems reasonable to me, just considering I wouldn’t tell someone to ‘just leave’ an irl space because someone was harassing them.
I agree in that I wouldn’t call what happened here ‘rape’ in a legal sense, but if you’re saying that something is inherently harmless because it’s done online, I strongly disagree. Otherwise, sorry if I misunderstood.
Image being on trial for playing Rimworld.
Again, eventually it could become a serious issue.
I’d get life in prison for sure.
They would launch us into the sun.
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Every GTA player sweating bullets right now.
Let’s wait for the feel suits to arrive before equating virtual “crimes” to real ones, especially in a medium where you can just block anyone, at most this should go in the same place a death threat via text goes for now.
Eh, I’d say death threats should be followed up on.
‘Virtual sexual harassment’ should be followed up on if it involves threats of real crimes.
Saying, “I’m gonna come to your house and rape you” is definitely cause for criminal investigation, if there’s enough evidence to make it viable.
Saying, “you like that, don’t you?” while “fondling” an avatar in VR is not cause for criminal investigation.
Tax dollars hard at work.
Just one count of assault? I’ve been teabagged online more times than I can count.
VR is immersive, but it isn’t that immersive, especially when it comes to user feedback
It’s not objective, it’s subjective. 100% of “immersion” is happening in your brain, where the signals received by your senses are being processed into experiences. Thus, different people will experience different levels of immersion, which is how things should be, instead of everyone being expected to try to feel the same as everyone else when faced with the same stimuli.
Basically you’re expressing an opinion. Which is fine, people can have those, but others can have other ones too. And that is also fine.
What I mean is there’s nothing pushing or pulling at you, you can clip your hand into the other person (or mush it to a point where it’s visually disconnected from where your arm is), you can easily remove yourself from the situation by logging off, taking the headset off, or both.
That’s fair. I can see a state of panic potentially being involved, but that could be addressed with technical improvements. Monitoring your eyeballs perhaps, and some sort of panic safety switch.
We’re talking about safe spaces again. Some people are hyper sensitive to things other people can tolerate just fine. It’s tricky to protect those people without criminalising behaviours that are harmless in normal circumstances. Once you criminalise everything everyone can become a criminal.
I think that’s fair, but I also think there’s something clinically wrong with people who’s reaction is anything but ripping off the headset when they feel violated
And I mean that in the context that these people should be given therapy for free. That level of attachment to an avatar is not a trait of a healthy person
To illustrate my point, there’s people who described their gta5 characters being violated was like being raped… If you’re being raped, and you could shut your eyes to make it stop, and you don’t…
That’s fine. We don’t use opinions or outliers to determine what is/isn’t clinically wrong though, it all varies too much. Humans are very unpredictable, we’re a good bit more complicated than most other animals. Medicine is not supposed to be a tool for conformity, but health. So, it has to acknowledge that people just aren’t logical. We’re wet, sloppy, buggy computers.
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?
What game is this ? I want to play.
Seems like you need to visit the horny jail.
You want to commit virtual rape? Are you for real dude?
When women talk about toxic masculinity and rape culture, this is exactly what they mean.
We actually could make a game about raping people. Do you think raping someone in a game would be illegal? it’s not illegal to kill someone in a game.
What a fucking dumb comparison. Your whataboutism argument is shit.
I think it’s a horrible idea. But if that’s the point of the game, then it’s expected. And just by playing the game, you’re giving consent for this to happen because that’s the whole point of the game and therefore it’s not rape.
The VR game the teenage girl was playing was not a rape game. She didn’t play that game to experience virtual rape. What happened to her is a form of sexual harassment and that’s a form of sexual abuse, which young girls and women are overwhelmingly the most frequent victims of this kind of abuse.
Instead you’re all here continuously defending the guys who harassed the girl, trying to find some stupid fucking argument to excuse their horrible behaviour with whataboutism and red herrings and all kinds of bullshit instead of questioning the men’s behavior.
Relax, no one here is saying that rape is ok. What people have issue with is actually calling it “virtual rape”. It’s stupid and pretty offensive to actual rape victims. Trying to classify it as a sexual offense in legal terms doesn’t make any sense. It’s all just avatars and animations. It would be possible for 10 year old boys to “virtually rape” grown women or even for 10 year old girls to virtually rape grown men. What’s next? Assaulting people by showing them images? Fraud charges for rick rolling someone?
Common sense approach is to say that if this would happen repeatedly to a user and it would be intentionally directed at them in order to make them leave the game it could be considered harassment. Same as sending someone offensive messages. That’s it.
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.
‘Assaulting someone in a VR game is still assault especially if they never consented.’
Sarcasm?
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.
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
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.
I am very glad I’m not dating in this day and age.
I met my partner by “sexually assaulting” someone.
She had thrown a house party. There was a guy there causing a problem. She wanted him to leave, but didn’t want a fight. This is the first time I met my now partner, but I volunteered.
The guy that needed to leave was sitting on the floor right next to a doorway. I just pulled out the ole wang jangler and leaned against the inside of the door way. My floppy bits were mere inches from his face.
He turned his head and noticed. He made a disgusted noise and moved. I chased this guy around the party with my John Thomas hanging out. Every time he sat down somewhere, there we were. After about 30 mins of that he got the picture and left.
My partner has always said that was the moment she knew she wanted to get to know me. Just to be clear it’s not huge or anything. I’m guessing it’s a confidence thing, but yeah I scared away an asshole, and convinced a woman I am the one. All by running around a party with my spicy bits hanging out.
I have a feeling that would be frowned upon these days.
Edit: Also, when I was a homeless heroin addict. My partner was the one that took me in, and paid for my treatment. That one decision has affected my life in more ways than I probably realized.
Remember when the Internet was new? Know how kids still get pedo’d now?
Setting precedent early is important. There will be billions of people in this soon enough and without regulation, it’s Westworld.
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?
