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
    1427·
    9 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
      467·
      9 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·
        9 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
      285·
      9 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·
        9 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·
                9 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.