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.
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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.
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.
There’re*
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.)
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.
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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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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
That’s the parent’s fault for letting them play something without adult supervision.
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.
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.
crouch crouch crouch
Dip dip potato chip
It sounds ridiculous that they assaulted an avatar. I think it is the wrong take. The avatar is just the medium. The target was obviously the person behind the avatar. It’s like saying that threats over text message is assaulting her phone.
Ssssh it’s okay iphone. Don’t listen to them. I know you were just protecting me from the bullies in high school
I didn’t know how to feel about the headline when I read it, is it possible to do that? I still don’t know. It’s not really for me to decide how SHE feels either. It just sounds… Weird? And not possible? I don’t know.
Regardless, in my mind, it depends on what the action was. If I send a text to your phone to hack it, then I guess I’m “assaulting your phone” but if the phone is the medium used to get to you then obviously it’s towards you.
And this can all be made moot by the software devs with an input box “keep non-friends N meters away”. Its all tech and virtual. Whatever she has a problem with can be an option to toggle for her.
Example from the article what it can look like:
Recalling the experience, Ms Patel told the same programme that she was “surrounded by three to four male-sounding and male-representing avatars, who started sexually harassing me in a verbal sense and then sexually assaulting my avatar”.
She said they had used misogynistic language and “continued to touch my avatar in a way that can only be described as a sexual assault of my avatar”.
So, I guess the appropriate terminology would be sexual harassment of the person by virtual sexual assault on their avatar in the VR space, or something like that.
I can imagine for an innocent person unprepared for it to be ganged and surrounded by deviants in VR sounds like it could be a proper traumatic experience. I don’t think there should be downplaying or normalizing this kind of experience for the sole reason that pervs are to be expected online. There is no reason to sink expectations of society to the lowest uncommon deranged denominator.
I feel guilty for that, I really do, but this description is very funny for me in a way a South Park episode could be.
It is absurd and funny, I agree, but only because it is not representative of what actually happened.
Yeah, I had and sometimes still have very strong feelings over much smaller unpleasantries in the Web, so it is bad.
No one is down playing it, it’s being up played by being labeled sexual assault. At worst this should be considered harassment.
Plenty of comments here alone dismiss everything about it.
We, as a seasoned internet nerd community and the gamers amongst us in particular, may have been exposed to edgy and lewd behaviour online since forever, not that it is a good thing.
It should not be considered normal that it happens everywhere online and it should not be expected that everyone should be as cynical and desensitised as we are.
But yeah. Assault is the wrong charge. It is sexual harassment. And it should be taken seriously.
It can’t be sexual assault.
[Edit: Sexual] Assault is physical contact.
No, that’s battery.
You’re thinking of battery
Downvoted for being right. Reddit 2.0
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/part/1/crossheading/assault
https://www.findlaw.com/state/new-york-law/new-york-sexual-assault-laws.html
https://www.shouselaw.com/ca/defense/penal-code/243-4/
You can look at other jurisdictions, but physical contact is core to the definition.
nope
https://vindicatelaw.com/assault-vs-battery-are-they-the-same-or-different-crimes/
The legal definition of assault is an intentional act that gives another person reasonable fear that they’ll be physically harmed or offensively touched.
No physical contact or injury has to actually occur, but the accused person must have intentionally acted in a way to cause that fear.
https://www.findlaw.com/criminal/criminal-charges/assault-and-battery-overview.html
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/assault_and_battery
Assault refers to the wrong act of causing someone to reasonably fear imminent harm. This means that the fear must be something a reasonable person would foresee as threatening to them. Battery refers to the actual wrong act of physically harming someone
I gave you the relevant jurisdiction and two major US ones. In all three cases, it cannot be sexual assault without actual sexual contact with the victim.
Regular assault isn’t relevant here.
And one of them says.
Five key things to know about California’s sexual battery laws are:
The one that also tells you California uses the terms interchangeably?
This is sexual harrassment, not assault. It’s still disgusting, but there’s no reasonable expectation of harm. They can always take off the headset.
And yet it’s completely possible to kill someone with cyber bullying. Trauma is trauma.
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Imagine if someone had killed them in a VR game
It’s entirely reasonable that a panicking and scared child might forget they can escape by removing their headset, or experience enough to end up traumatised before they’ve got it off - if they don’t log out, too, they’ll know people are still there doing things to a representation of themselves. There’s still harm, even if the exact nature of the harm is different.
Of course. It’s still sexual harrassment!
Sure. That’s why the parent can look into what game they are purchasing, if it features multiplayer, if it connects you to voice chat, etc. And from that information they can make an informed decision - do I put my toddler in the VR headset so I can have some peace and quiet for the rest of the day, or do I maybe try to parent for a while longer?
Here’s a generous disclaimer: Don’t leave your kids next to me in a game. I’ll trick them into giving me their gear and then teach them the kind of new words that’ll make you pretend you don’t know them when they bring it up in public. You can do with that information what you will.
VR isn’t that believable yet. It’s not the Sword Art Online
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.
I guess you’d have a point if this didn’t really happen.
But the only evidence this did happen is from the Daily Mail so you can see the problem. It’s like trusting Fox as a reliable news source
Are you saying it didn’t happen, then?
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.
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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.
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?
The amount of murder I have done in gaming. I’m going away for a long time boys💀
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?
Please don’t kill people in Counter strike or they might get PTSD
[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.
Yeah but wild we don’t over exaggerate the situation, how will I get all the attention?
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.
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.
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.
I don’t think people have the right to ‘feel safe’ around every single person they interact with on the internet. If she doesn’t like how those people behave, she’s free to leave and interact with others.
At some point, we have to take responsibility for our own actions and the people we choose to associate with.
Oh really?
So she gets harassed online and she’s the one that has to leave? She’s the one that has to sacrifice her enjoyment of the game due to other people’s bad behaviour?
That seems fair to you?
She can still enjoy the game. Nobody is forcing her to interact with those people.
Even if the game was built around enabling them, then she could always go play a different game or just about anything else. Nobody is forcing her to play a game that makes her feel uncomfortable.
The same goes for, say, going to forums where people say things you don’t like. You have the power to leave. Taxpayer resources shouldn’t be wasted in making sure every single microcosm on the internet makes everyone ‘feel safe.’
I don’t understand why this is such a difficult concept for you.
Because that concept that YOU are defining here enables the aggressors and, in this case, perpetuates rape culture.
If I were to be harassed, sexually or otherwise, in a forum like this one right here, the mods would ban the harasser. It’s their duty to allow the users to be in a safe, respectful and civil environment.
And if I were to be harassed continually on any Lemmy instance, there are cyber bullying laws in most countries to address this and you can be sure the police would be involved. Online harassment is a real world issue with real world consequences.
Edit: And no, she can’t enjoy the game anymore knowing that this shit happened to her and can happen again and again. It completely ruined the experience for her.
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.
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.
What a joke.
Real crimes are being compared to vr “crimes”. Next will be thought crimes.
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 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?
