Rape in the metaverse: a case for the real-life police?

UK police are investigating an alleged rape in the metaverse, after a child's avatar was attacked in a virtual reality game.

A girl under the age of 16 was left "distraught" after her digital character was "gang raped" by a group of "several adult men" in an online room, the Daily Mail's crime editor Rebecca Camber reported. Although there was "no physical attack", officers were said to have claimed the girl "suffered the same psychological and emotional trauma as someone who has been raped in the real world", as the metaverse – online experiences often accessed via virtual reality headsets – is "designed to be completely immersive".

A senior officer reportedly told the newspaper that sexual offending in online worlds was "rife". This "landmark" case, said Camber, raises questions about whether "such an attack should be prosecuted under current laws". But critics may also ask whether police and prosecutors should be pursuing virtual offences while "struggling with an enormous backlog of actual rape cases".

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

'No sliding scale for sexual violence'

Some experts say that rapes and murders in the metaverse "might have to be treated as criminal offences because of the real-life impact on the victims", the London Evening Standard reported last week, before news of the "virtual rape" investigation emerged. Graeme Biggar, head of the National Crime Agency, told that paper that victims would "feel a physical manifestation" of an attack if wearing a haptic suit, which allows the user to sense actions carried out in virtual reality.

Home Secretary James Cleverly told LBC's Nick Ferrari today that while it is easy to dismiss these incidents as "not being real", the "whole point" of virtual realities is their "incredibly immersive" nature.

 Jayne Butler, CEO of charity Rape Crisis, has also previously warned of the impact of such attacks. "There is a tendency to minimise online abuse or think of it as less damaging than that committed offline," she told Vogue in 2022, but there is "no sliding scale for sexual violence".

'Avatars not yet legal persons'

UK legislation is "unlikely to cover rape in the metaverse", said the Mail's Camber, as sexual assault is defined as "the physical touching of another person sexually without their consent". The internet also "blurs geographical boundaries", making jurisdiction difficult to determine. 

The UK's new Online Safety Act covers the metaverse but imposes the duty of care on platform providers rather than law enforcement. Several sex attacks are reported to have occurred on Horizon Worlds, the virtual reality game run by Facebook owner Meta. A spokesperson for the tech giant told The Times that such behaviour has "no place on our platform", which is why users have an "automatic protection called personal boundary" that keeps strangers a few feet away.

According to the paper, details of the case being investigated by UK police are being "kept secret to protect the child involved, amid fears that a prosecution would not be possible".

Avatars "have not been established as either legal or natural persons", Alexandra Andhov, an associate professor of law at the University of Copenhagen, told Forbes  last year. So "while their witness statements can be included in a case, the value a judge or jury would give to such evidence remains open".

And to allow an avatar, and the real-life person behind them, "to sue or to be sued", said the news site, any prosecution might necessitate "imbuing an avatar with legal personality".