Police investigating \u201cvirtual rape\u201d after girl \u2018attacked\u2019 in metaverse Pexels.com: cottonbro studioBritish police are investigating what\u2019s being called a \u201cvirtual rape\u201d after a 16-year-old girl was \u2018attacked\u2019 by several men in a virtual reality space. The 16-year-old victim wasn\u2019t physically harmed in the attack, which took place in VR \u2014 but is reportedly mentally shaken after experiencing the incident. The child was wearing a headset during the confrontation, during which her avatar was \u201cattacked\u201d by several men in a virtual \u201croom,\u201d as per reports from The Standard. While she wasn\u2019t physically injured, police say that the victim experienced trauma similar to that of people who have been sexually assaulted. \u201cVirtual rape\u201d investigated by police after 16-year-old \u2018attacked\u2019 in VR \u201cThis child experienced psychological trauma similar to that of someone who has been physically raped,\u201d a senior officer said in a statement to the Daily Mail. \u201cThere 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.\u201d While most details about the case are being kept under wraps to protect the underage victim, this marks the very first time a \u2018virtual sexual offense\u2019 is being investigated by UK police. A spokesperson from Meta gave a statement about the situation, saying to the Mail, \u201c[This] 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\u2019t know a few feet away from you.\u201d Ian Critchley, the National Police Chiefs\u2019 Council\u2019s Child Protection and Abuse Investigation Lead, gave a warning about the Metaverse to the Mail, saying it \u201ccreates a gateway for predators to commit horrific crimes against children.\u201d He added, \u201cAs such, our policing approach must continually evolve to enable us to relentlessly pursue predators and safeguard victims across all online spaces.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Police investigating \u201cvirtual rape\u201d after girl \u2018attacked\u2019 in metaverse Pexels.com: cottonbro studioBritish police are investigating what\u2019s being called a \u201cvirtual rape\u201d after a 16-year-old girl was \u2018attacked\u2019 by several men in a virtual reality space. The 16-year-old victim wasn\u2019t physically harmed in the attack, which took place in VR \u2014 but is reportedly mentally shaken […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58142\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}