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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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
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.