The incident in a virtual world reportedly left the under-16-year-old traumatised.

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.

  • Kalkaline @leminal.space
    1398·
    11 months ago

    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.

    • Cyber Yuki@lemmy.world
      477·
      11 months ago

      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.

      • kase@lemmy.world
        2·
        11 months ago

        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.)

    • PopMyCop@iusearchlinux.fyi
      275·
      11 months ago

      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.

      • ToxicWaste@lemm.ee
        6·
        11 months ago

        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.

              • littleblue✨@lemmy.world
                22·
                11 months ago

                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.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
      2512·
      11 months ago

      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.

      • Lath@kbin.social
        486·
        11 months ago

        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.

        • Cyborganism@lemmy.ca
          276·
          11 months ago

          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.

  • whaleross@lemmy.world
    11716·
    11 months ago

    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.

    • DreamButt@lemmy.worldEnglish
      19·
      11 months ago

      Ssssh it’s okay iphone. Don’t listen to them. I know you were just protecting me from the bullies in high school

    • skankhunt42@lemmy.ca
      141·
      11 months ago

      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.

      • whaleross@lemmy.world
        322·
        11 months ago

        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.

        • rottingleaf@lemmy.zip
          51·
          11 months ago

          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.

          • whaleross@lemmy.world
            1·
            11 months ago

            It is absurd and funny, I agree, but only because it is not representative of what actually happened.

            • rottingleaf@lemmy.zip
              1·
              11 months ago

              Yeah, I had and sometimes still have very strong feelings over much smaller unpleasantries in the Web, so it is bad.

        • FluorideMind@lemmy.world
          21·
          11 months ago

          No one is down playing it, it’s being up played by being labeled sexual assault. At worst this should be considered harassment.

          • whaleross@lemmy.world
            2·
            11 months ago

            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.

  • Draedron@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    91·
    11 months ago

    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.

  • Feathercrown@lemmy.worldEnglish
    977·
    11 months ago

    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.

    • Maggoty@lemmy.world
      4312·
      11 months ago

      And yet it’s completely possible to kill someone with cyber bullying. Trauma is trauma.

    • AnyOldName3@lemmy.world
      2230·
      11 months ago

      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.

  • Chaos@lemmy.world
    412·
    11 months ago

    The amount of murder I have done in gaming. I’m going away for a long time boys💀

  • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
    424·
    11 months ago

    [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.

    • feedum_sneedson@lemmy.world
      71·
      11 months ago

      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.

    • Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
      73·
      11 months ago

      Yeah but wild we don’t over exaggerate the situation, how will I get all the attention?

    • deaf_fish@lemm.ee
      2·
      11 months ago

      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.

    • Candelestine@lemmy.worldEnglish
      114·
      11 months ago

      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.

      • ExLisper@linux.communityEnglish
        8·
        11 months ago

        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.

      • JustARaccoon@lemmy.world
        6·
        11 months ago

        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.

        • Candelestine@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          11 months ago

          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.

      • theneverfox@pawb.socialEnglish
        2·
        11 months ago

        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…

        • Candelestine@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          11 months ago

          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.

    • LUHG@lemmy.world
      5·
      11 months ago

      If it got that good vr would be in every household. Can’t wait to get a strangers finger up the bum.

  • yamanii@lemmy.world
    355·
    11 months ago

    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.

    • chitak166@lemmy.world
      21·
      11 months ago

      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.

  • kingthrillgore
    3911·
    11 months ago

    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.

    • Zeon@lemmy.world
      103·
      11 months ago

      ‘Assaulting someone in a VR game is still assault especially if they never consented.’

      Sarcasm?

  • I Cast Fist@programming.devEnglish
    27·
    11 months ago

    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?

  • Dr. Coomer@lemmy.worldEnglish
    282·
    11 months ago

    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.

  • Wanderer@lemm.ee
    3310·
    11 months ago

    What a joke.

    Real crimes are being compared to vr “crimes”. Next will be thought crimes.