After a 16-year-old girl was “gang-raped” in the online “metaverse,” police in the United Kingdom are investigating the first case of an alleged rape in a virtual reality game. According to The New York Post, the youngster was devastated after her avatar–her digital character–was gang-raped by online strangers.
According to the report, the adolescent was wearing a virtual reality headset while playing an immersive game when she was allegedly raped by a gang of males. Though she received no physical injuries, investigating officers stated that she had the same emotional and psychological distress as someone who had been raped in the “real world.”
The case is thought to be the first virtual sexual crime being investigated by the police.
“This child experienced psychological trauma similar to that of someone who has been physically raped. There is an emotional and psychological impact on the victim that is longer term than any physical injuries,” a senior officer familiar with the case told the news outlet.
“It poses a number of challenges for law enforcement given current legislation is not set up for this,” the officer added.
The game in metaverse is still unknown
However, it is still unknown what game the adolescent girl was playing at the time of the alleged offense.
Given that police and prosecutors are now dealing with a massive backlog of actual gang-raped cases, the inquiry into the landmark case has raised doubts about whether authorities should be pursuing virtual offenses.
However, UK Home Secretary James Cleverly defended the virtual reality rape investigation, claiming that the kid had suffered “sexual trauma.”
“I know it is easy to dismiss this as being not real, but the whole point of these virtual environments is they are incredibly immersive,” Mr Cleverly told news outlet LBC.
“It’s also worth realizing that somebody willing to put a child through a trauma like that digitally may well be someone that could go on to do terrible things in the physical realm.”
How has Meta reacted?
Several reports of virtual sex crimes have surfaced in Horizon Worlds, a free VR game hosted by Facebook’s parent company, Meta.
“The kind of behaviour described has no place on our platform, which is why for all users we have an automatic protection called personal boundary, which keeps people you don’t know a few feet away from you,” a spokesperson for Meta said.
