Girl reported her avatar's rape, now the English police are investigating

The English police are investigating a case of rape truly particular, which concerns theavatar of a lass in a virtual world. This was told by Donna Jones, president of the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners of the United Kingdom.

Jones explained that a complaint was filed in this regard during 2023, which triggered the investigation. The virtual rape did not cause physical harm to the girl, but “psychological trauma”, so much so that the National Police Chiefs' Council (NPCC) asked those who manage the metaverses, according to Ian Critchley, to do more to protect the their users, because they represent a “gateway for predators to commit horrific crimes against children, crimes that we know have lasting impacts both emotionally and mentally. We need to see a lot more effort from tech companies to make their platforms safe places.”

The victim of virtual rape would be a girl under 16 years at the time of the events who, according to what was reported, had suffered psychological trauma “similar to that of a physically raped person”.

The problem in this case is the lack of a physical contact, one of the prerequisites required by law for it to be possible to talk about sexual violence. So there is already talk of legislative changes to effectively prosecute these new crimes, or of resorting to existing laws adapting them as needed.

A new type of sexual violence?

This is not the first case of reported sexual assault in metaverses in the UK. In 2022 it was the researcher Nina Jane Patel who spoke about rape suffered in Horizon Venues by Half (now integrated into Horizon Worlds), from other avatars who surrounded her to verbally harass her and then sexually assault her avatar.

The new case it has not been told in detail and it has not yet been revealed in which one metaverse happened, even if a press note issued by Meta suggests that it also happened on Horizon Worlds. The company first recalled that it has installed an automatic protection called “personal boundaries” that automatically keeps strangers at a distance, then said it will investigate as more details emerge.