Wasting Time: Police Investigate A Virtual Rape

In 2002, Tom Cruise made a movie called “Minority Report.” It was set In the year 2054 A.D. crime is virtually eliminated from Washington D.C. thanks to an elite law enforcing squad “Precrime.” They use three gifted humans (called “Pre-Cogs”) with special powers to see into the future and predict crimes beforehand. John Anderton heads Precrime and believes in the system’s flawlessness steadfastly. However, one day the Pre-Cogs predict that Anderton will commit a murder himself in the next 36 hours. Worse, Anderton doesn’t even know the victim. He decides to get to the mystery’s core by finding out the “minority report” which means the prediction of the female Pre-Cog Agatha that might tell a different story and prove Anderton innocent.

Pretty far-fetched stuff. Imagine being able to predict a crime before it’s committed. On the other hand, imagine if you’re wrong. Then you have arrested someone for not committing a crime.

While it isn’t exactly the same thing, the police in the U.K. are now investigating a “virtual” rape that took place in the Meta-Verse. In this case, a girl under the age of 16 has been left “distraught” after her digital character, which is known as an avatar was gang raped by online strangers.

Now keep in mind that this attack was totally virtual, no physical attack took place and there were no injuries. This incident took place in virtual reality (VR) within a headset that the girl was wearing. Still, the police say that she suffered the same psychological and emotional distress and trauma as someone that had been raped in the real world.

I’ll admit that I have limited knowledge of the metaverse. My understanding is that it’s a network of shared, immersive virtual worlds where people can connect with friends, create, and play games, work and shop. You can think of the metaverse as a cyberspace, or an evolved, three-dimensional internet where logging in isn’t necessary. Well, at least that is what people like Mark Zuckerberg want it to become. A place where a person can live a fantasy life in a digital realm. In this case the girl’s avatar was in an online room with a large number of other users and the virtual assault took place by several adult male avatars.

There are some police leaders that believe legislation is necessary due to a wave of virtual sexual assaults that are taking place. These people claim that officers must develop new tactics to keep perverts from using the technology to exploit children. While I can see some perverts using the technology to get their jollies, in a make-believe world, couldn’t you say the same thing about games that are violent in other ways?

What I’m asking is this, if police are going to investigate virtual rapes, are they also going to begin investigating virtual muggings? How about virtual car thefts, or virtual robberies? Virtual stabbings? Virtual murders? Where does it end?

I’m going to take an educated guess that most police forces are already very busy investigating real life crime. If investigating virtual crimes are added to their duties, it will reduce the amount of time and effort that they can dedicate to crime that is actually taking place here and now.

This first case is being treated as though an actual rape has taken place, in that the name of the minor involved has not been released. Under current laws, it seems inconceivable that any type of conviction could be attained. I also question how real significant psychological trauma can be experienced when you are fully aware that everything that happens isn’t real. Let’s face it, there are people in the world today that can be offended by anything. These “snowflakes” raise hell if a wrong pronoun is used when talking with them. So, do we really want to burden our police when no true damage has been done?

Still, one senior officer that’s familiar with the case stated:

“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. It poses a number of challenges for law enforcement given current legislation is not set up for this.”

There have been a number of reported sex attacks on Horizon Worlds, a free VR online game run by Facebook’s owner, Meta. In Horizon Worlds users create their own avatars, an animated online representation of themselves that they can design and then control while wearing their virtual reality headset and associated equipment.

A spokesman for Meta defended Horizon Worlds saying: “The kind of behavior 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.”

Recently, the National Police Chiefs’ Council’s Child Protection and Abuse Investigation Lead, Ian Critchley, warned that “the metaverse creates a gateway for predators to commit horrific crimes against children.”

Police believe developments in gaming have opened up new avenues for cybercrime, including virtual robbery, ransomware, fraud and identity theft. However, current legislation is unlikely to cover rape in the metaverse as sexual assault is defined in the Sexual Offences Act as the physical touching of another person sexually without their consent.

The nature of the metaverse also blurs geographical boundaries, making it difficult to determine which law enforcement agency has jurisdiction over a particular incident when users and perpetrators are in different countries.

Critchley went on not to say: “We know offender’s tactics to groom and commit offences are constantly evolving. This is why our collective fight against predators like in this case, is essential to ensuring young people are protected online and can use technology safely without threat or fear. The metaverse creates a gateway for predators to commit horrific crimes against children. Crimes we know have lifelong impacts both emotionally and mentally. As such, our policing approach must continually evolve to enable us to relentlessly pursue predators and safeguard victims across all online spaces.”

“The passing of the Online Safety Act is instrumental to this, and we must see much more action from tech companies to do more to make their platforms safe places.”

The hacking of personal information can cause real life damage to a person. As can things such as bullying on social media platforms because the damage is tangible in real life. However, it seems to me that creating a fictional character online is not in the same sphere as those things.

If someone beats up your avatar, or worse, no-one is really hurt. In saying this, I am not condoning acting like a criminal or an animal online under any circumstances. Still, trying to police a fantasy land and prosecute those that offend someone is not reality, just like Horizon Worlds and other virtual reality games.