A sexual assault in the metaverse has investigators questioning the future of virtual crime prosecution

• British authorities are investigating allegations of a simulated gang rape of a teenager’s VR avatar.

• The teenager told police she was playing a VR video game using a headset when male players attacked her avatar.

• Officials say the girl suffered trauma consistent with an actual attack, but others aren’t so sure that’s possible.

The British government is currently investigating a teenager’s claim that her avatar was gang raped in an immersive virtual reality game, apparently addressing the novel question of whether such an act can be prosecuted in the metaverse.

The girl, identified only as under 16, was wearing a VR headset to play online when several male gamers attacked and “raped” her digital avatar, British police sources said. The Daily Post.

Although she suffered no physical injuries, the girl was left deeply disturbed after the incident, the news agency reported. A senior police officer familiar with the case told the Daily Mail that she had experienced trauma similar to that of an actual attack.

Donna Jones, chair of the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners, confirmed to The BBC that the incident was first reported to authorities in 2023, after which police launched an investigation. However, the BBC could not verify which force launched the investigation into the attack.

Regardless of how British police ultimately handle the incident, law enforcement and security researchers say concerns about sexual harassment and violence in the metaverse must be considered as virtual and augmented reality technology becomes increasingly compelling.

VR headsets cover the user’s peripheral vision, providing an immersive experience. Depending on user settings, players may feel vibrations in their hand controllers when game stimuli occur.

While users whose characters find themselves in precarious game situations with other player-controlled characters may not face a direct physical threat, researchers say the immersive nature of a VR experience can heighten the emotional response to the content presented through the goggles or sensory inputs registered by haptic suits. These touch-sensitive full-body suits vibrate in response to virtual stimuli, reacting when users’ characters bump into a wall or take a hit, for example.

In-game actions with psychological toll

“Proponents of this technology can’t have it both ways,” Katherine Cross, who researches online harassment at the University of Washington, told Business Insider. “You can’t tout the realism of these virtual worlds and then deny or downplay that the ugly things that happen in them have some of the unfortunate knock-on effects of real-world behavior. If something is real enough to be uniquely marketable, it’s also real enough that there are social and psychological consequences when things go wrong.”

Cross said the core of VR technology is to trick the user’s brain at a basic level, making them believe they are physically experiencing things on the screen by mimicking sensations that occur in the real world, such as walking across the room or swimming. This brain trickery is why users sometimes feel a little disoriented for a few seconds when they take off the headset and realize they are still standing in their living room or at the exhibition center.

“And that means that when something potentially traumatic happens in that space, you immediately or almost immediately consciously realize that it’s just a game and it’s not really happening, but there’s this moment where the reptilian brain has to sort of catch up,” Cross said. “So it’s not unreasonable to think that this could lead to trauma.”

Although security researchers and law enforcement agencies raise the question of the possible real-world impact of VR attacks and harassment, the debate rages in online forums such as Reddit about the impact of virtual sexual assault, with some users saying that claims of being traumatised by virtual attacks downplay the number of “actual rape victims”.

At Instagram, In response to a New York Post article about the incident, users joked that the attackers who harassed the girl online should be sent to a “virtual prison.” Others joked that they were waiting for justice after their character was killed in “Call of Duty,” a first-person shooter game.

“I know it’s easy to dismiss this as not real, but the whole point of these virtual environments is that they are incredibly immersive,” said British Home Secretary James Cleverly LBC about the incident. “And we’re talking about a child here, and a child has experienced sexual trauma. It will have had very significant psychological impact, and we should be very, very cautious about dismissing this.”

He added: “You also have to be aware that someone who is willing to subject a child to such trauma digitally is potentially someone who could subsequently do terrible things in the physical realm.”

Sexual harassment at “Horizon Worlds”

Allegations like those of the British girl are not uncommon. There are numerous reports of virtual sexual harassment in connection with Meta’s VR game “Horizon Worlds”. However, it remains unclear whether the incident took place within Meta’s game or in another VR world.

In 2022, a metaverse researcher studying user behavior on Horizon Worlds wrote that her avatar raped about an hour after the start of their first session.

“One part of my brain thought, what the hell is happening here, the other part thought, this is not a real body, and another part thought, this is important research,” the researcher said in her report of the incident, adding that the users who attacked her avatar had asked her to 4-foot safety bubble before the attack is launched.

Months earlier, in 2021, another metaverse researcher named Nina Jane Patel said in a post on Medium that three to four male-looking avatars raped her avatar within 60 seconds of her joining.Horizon Worldsand called the incident a surreal nightmare.

“The girl involved is very brave,” Patel told BI. “Bringing this to the attention of the police would not have been an easy task and their actions are uncharted territory. We don’t know where this will lead, but it is a step in the right direction.”

In the summer of 2022, after initial reports of sexual harassment and simulated assaults on the platform, The edge reported that Meta had expanded the allowable content types in Horizon Worlds to include “mature” content for users over 18, including depictions of alcohol, tobacco and marijuana use, as well as “near nudity, depictions of people in suggestive or suggestive positions, or an environment focused on activities that are overly suggestive.”

However, “nudity, the depiction of people in explicit positions or content or worlds that are sexually provocative or implied” remain prohibited in public spaces, Metas says. politics to adult content on the site. In-game avatars are depicted from the torso up and therefore do not have legs or genitals visible while playing. However, users can simulate sex with provocative positions of their avatars.

Representatives of Meta did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider. A spokesperson for the tech giant said metro: “There is no place for the behavior described on our platform. That’s why we have set up an automatic protection called ‘personal boundary’ for all users, which keeps people you don’t know a few meters away from you.”

The new frontier of cybercrime

While this is not the first reported sexual assault in virtual reality, it is believed to be the first time that British authorities have investigated whether such an assault could be prosecuted as a criminal offense.

Patel told BI that there is a need for specific legislation that addresses the unique nature of crimes in the metaverse, including defining and criminalizing grooming, bullying and harassment in virtual environments. She also advocates for the creation of strict age verification systems, privacy controls and parental supervision tools tailored to the immersive experience of the metaverse without stifling the innovation and freedom that make the alternate reality so exciting.

“Protecting children in the metaverse requires a multi-faceted approach: psychologically sound safeguards to prevent trauma, robust legal frameworks to define and prosecute crimes, and international cooperation to effectively enforce those laws,” Patel told BI. “This is a critical area that requires immediate attention to ensure the metaverse is a safe and positive place for young users.”

However, Cross is not sure one-size-fits-all legislation is the right answer. Laws that criminalize behavior in the metaverse treat a symptom, not the cause, of the problem, and government enforcement forces “may not be able to provide people with the relief they seek or deserve.”

“I think ultimately it’s up to platform operators to discuss these issues more openly with the public,” Cross told BI. “And they need to put in place a serious package of reforms that empowers users, gives them organizational tools, not just private moderation tools, but the ability to effectively monitor their own communities and work hand in hand with an expanded moderation and trust and safety team.”

Cross added that she believes more effective legislation requires large companies to have adequately staffed trust and safety teams to deal with virtual harassment issues, putting the onus on companies, not individuals, to ensure the safety of online and virtual reality platforms.

Although existing laws prohibit cybercrime, including fraud, harassment and the distribution of child sexual abuse material online, an investigator familiar with the British case told the Daily Mail they were not sure whether the teenager claim could be prosecuted under current law, on the grounds that “current legislation does not provide for this.”

“We are starting to think about what constitutes crime in the metaverse and how we police it,” said Graeme Biggar, director of the UK’s National Crime Agency, The Evening Standard.

He added: “That doesn’t dominate our thinking because there are enough crimes in the real world that we have to deal with. But if you’re in the metaverse and you’re wearing a haptic suit that lets you sense what’s happening to you and then you’re sexually assaulted, raped or murdered even though you’re not wearing a haptic suit, is that OK?”

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