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In the first of its kind involving metaverse, British Police are investigating an alleged gang rape case that took place in a virtual reality game after the avatar or digital character of a 16-year-old girl was sexually attacked by online strangers, The New York Post reported.
The teen was wearing a virtual reality headset in an immersive game when a group of men allegedly raped her, the report said, adding that she was not physically injured but suffered the emotional trauma as she was raped in the real world.
However, it’s not clear what game the teenage girl was engaged in at the time of the alleged transgression.
A senior police officer familiar with the case told the news outlet that it poses many challenges for law enforcement given that the current legislation is not set up for this. It is believed that the case is the first virtual sexual offense investigated by police officials.
Since police and prosecutors are currently dealing with a massive backlog of real rape cases, the inquiry into the historic case has raised concerns about whether police should be pursuing virtual offenses, NYP reported.
However, UK Home Secretary James Cleverly has defended the virtual reality rape investigation by claiming that the child has experienced “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. 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,” Cleverly told news outlet LBC.
Responding to the incident, a Meta spokesperson said the kind of behavior mentioned has no place on their platform, which is why they automatically enforce a personal boundary for every user which keeps strangers a safe distance away from users.
Virtual sex crimes have been reported on multiple occasions in Horizon Worlds, a free VR game run by Meta, the parent company of Facebook.
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Published: 03 Jan 2024, 01:11 PM IST
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