Police investigate virtual sex assault on girl's avatar
bbc.com
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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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.
Doubt. It’s always gonna be a game.
I'm not sure why that means you can't use it to effectively sexually harass someone. Women get sexually harassed on games now.
Not trying to be a smart ass but what do you consider sexual harassment in a game?
Repeatedly sending unsolicited rude sexual messages would be one possibility. Which is something female gamers constantly have to deal with right now and sometimes the harassers suffer no consequences and keep doing it, possibly to many women. That sort of thing can have a major psychological effect on someone. But even if it doesn't, women should not have to and not be expected to put up with that shit when they're trying to have the same kind of fun men have.
Can’t that be solved by just blocking annoying people? I do that all the time and it works perfect.
If the game allows for it. It's under no legal obligation to do so.
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?
That’s absolutely ridiculous and honestly offensive to compare an actual rape and someone’s game avitar getting too close to your game avitar. What a joke. You’re never in danger in front of a screen. They can’t reach through the screen and touch you. What a fucking weird take on reality you have. You do have a right to “feel safe” it’s called turn the game off if it bothers you that much. Pathetic.
What's pathetic is to not even condone the men who harassed her and blame the girl for not leaving a game she was enjoying harmlessly.
Not saying any of that is right. But it’s not rape. It’s an annoyance. Block and move on.
I'm not saying it's rape either. But it's sexual harassment. And since it's in a virtual reality setting where the user experienced this in first person, I wouldn't be surprised it left the victims with a certain degree of psychological trauma.
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.