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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It’s right there in the quick access menu, a single button press away at any time.
Right where in what quick access menu? I don’t even know what you’re talking about, but I have no idea why you think some ‘report’ button on, for example, Windows, would send a report to the game company who would then act on the sexual harassment. It’s also certainly not universal to all OSes and consoles.
You mean the harassers, right? They were the ones ruining the fun.