by Mujtaba Hussain
SRINAGAR: For the first time, the occurrence of virtual gang rape has emerged within the Metaverse. A 16-year-old girl in the UK fell victim to a virtual assault by a group of men, not within the physical realm, but in the digital expanse known as the Metaverse.
This digital landscape allows participants to immerse themselves in a variety of activities, mimicking the real world. By crafting a personalised avatar, individuals can engage in activities such as playing, working, eating, sleeping, investing, buying, selling, dancing, and singing. Unfortunately, this also means that actions like expressing affection, engaging in romantic encounters, harassment, abuse, rape, molestation, and unauthorised physical contact can occur without the explicit consent of others.
In the face of escalating incidents of sex crimes against women, a new frontier of challenges has emerged, sex crimes in the virtual realm. The narrative unfolds with the digital avatar of a minor girl falling victim to an assault orchestrated by a group of unfamiliar male characters within the intricate landscape of a virtual reality game, resulting in a disturbing instance of virtual gang rape.
While the assailants may have been digital entities, the gravity of the situation is palpable, with the young girl spared from physical harm but grappling with the profound mental and psychological trauma synonymous with physical assault. Her fear is genuine, and the emotional toll is profound, casting a spotlight on the far-reaching implications of virtual offences on the well-being of individuals.
The British police started an investigation into this virtual gang rape case immediately after the alleged rape surfaced. Police sources told The Daily Mail that while the girl did not suffer physical harm there is immense emotional and psychological impact on her that is long-term.
“I know it is easy to dismiss this as being not real, but the whole point of these virtual environments is they are incredibly immersive. And we are talking about a child here, and a child has gone through sexual trauma,” James Cleverly, Secretary of State for the Home Department in the British government told news outlet LBC. “It will have had a very significant psychological effect and we should be very, very careful about being dismissive of this.”
Cleverly also argued that someone willing to rape a child’s avatar in a video game may well be someone that could go on to do terrible things in the physical realm.
However, the investigation by the police has also raised questions about probing the crimes of the Metaverse mainly because of two reasons. The first is that we do not have appropriate existing laws that cover these acts, and the second is that the police have limited resources to utilise them on the proportionately large number of in-person rape cases.
The owners and advocates of social networking sites believe that Metaverse is the future of the internet. Mark Zuckerberg sometime before has also rebranded the name of his company Facebook to Meta, saying that Metaverse is going to be the future of social networking. Tech giants like Microsoft, Meta (formerly Facebook), Epic Games, and Nvidia have invested billions in the VR and AR headsets, equipment necessarily needed to access the metaverse technology.
There are around 400 million metaverse users worldwide as of now, mostly children and according to Statista, a UK-based business data intelligence platform, this number will grow to 2633 million users by 2030. So, as the world becomes more and more digitally immersive and make-real, the geographical borders of the countries seem to get blurred and insignificant. It will become challenging to define which law enforcement agency has a say about which virtual incident.
A spokesperson for Meta, speaking on the issue, said, “The kind of behaviour described and incidents like virtual rape have 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.”
There is also a group of intellectuals who believe that we are not prepared for what we have created.
