Virtually (adv.)
- Nearly / Almost
- By means of virtual reality techniques
It has long been recognised that with new technology comes new variants of criminal activity. In response, our criminal laws arrive on the scene as the white blood cells of our body politic and are applied, adapted, or entirely overwhelmed. It is a familiar pattern. The internet brought with it new ways of committing fraud, smaller cameras led to new forms of voyeurism, and as a flurry of recent articles and academic papers have sought to illustrate, virtual reality platforms may now be home to new forms of sexual offence: virtual rape and virtual sexual assault.
By Alexander Jurczynski, Pupil at 3PB Barristers
This issue came to prominence in the UK last year after a police investigation into the alleged ‘gang-rape’ of an under-16 year old girl’s virtual persona (avatar) by other avatars in the Metaverse, the headset-enabled virtual world developed by Meta.[1] As reported in the Daily Mail, an unnamed senior officer characterised this behaviour as leading to ‘the same psychological and emotional trauma as someone who had been raped in the real world’ due to the immersive nature of virtual reality. In the US, the Washington Post also delved into this phenomenon, giving an account of a different incident, this time experienced by Nina Patel, a Metaverse researcher:
Three male figures surrounded her avatar […] They touched her avatar’s breasts and pressed their torsos rhythmically against her, telling her that she wanted it. A fourth took photos of the incident in the app. [She said] “my physical body was responding […] I was very uncomfortable. Fight or flight mode kicked in.”[2]
Critics have been quick to critique – ‘Just take off the headset!’ Of course, avoiding the platform avoids the problem, but this raises several issues. On principle, no-one should be precluded from entering any environment for fear of encountering sexual violations, and furthermore virtual reality platforms may soon play a necessary role in our lives. Recent research from the Institution of Engineering and Technology suggests that, over the course of their lifetime, the next generation will spend approximately ten years in virtual reality – working, socialising, and learning with others.[3] In these circumstances, the solution of ‘just take off the headset’ might have the same impractical resonance as ‘don’t go out late alone’ has to women who commute to work in darkness for five months of the year. Therefore, it makes sense for the law to address this form of ‘Metacrime’ – a term used by INTERPOL in a January 2024 white paper in which they stressed that it is essential to identify gaps both in law enforcement and in legal frameworks to criminalise such behaviour.[4]
Does rape exist in virtual reality?
Applying the existing law, defined in Section 1 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003, the offence of rape cannot be made out in virtual reality; the most immediate issue simply being that Metaverse avatars do not have genitalia, and therefore the offence falls at the first hurdle. However, the issue of whether the terminology of rape could be used to include crimes committed in virtual reality has been assessed by Professor Clare McGlynn and Dr Carlotta Rigotti in the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies. Their article, ‘From Virtual Rape to Meta-Rape: Sexual Violence, Criminal Law and the Metaverse’ (April 2025) introduces a novel praxis, the new concept of ‘meta-rape’ which they argue better captures the ‘intense and embodied nature of these forms of sexual violence’ than the word ‘virtual’, with its connotations of being less-than-real. They argue that rape as a legal formulation varies across jurisdictions, therefore rape is a flexible term within the socio-legal discourse, ‘to the extent that it has been considered devoid of an essence’. They continue:
In deploying the term ‘rape’, meta-rape challenges the tendency to downplay acts like ‘groping’ or sexual harassment […] using the word ‘rape’ can help challenge the social and legal hierarchies that often place acts like harassment as less severe than rape. By framing all sexual violence under a term associated with serious harm, the aim is to resist distinctions that may imply that certain forms of violence are less significant.[5]
This reasoning is two-fold: in the real world, having a gradation in the severity of sexual violations does a disservice to the experience of victims, and this may therefore be rectified in the virtual world with a concept that elevates all sexual violations to the status of rape. This argument is well-intentioned, but is surely undermined by a simple rule of economics – namely that in practice, an increase in circulation leads to a decrease in value. If all non-consensual sexual contact becomes associated with rape, the word loses its meaning and the offence loses the severity which sets it apart. Likewise, if all virtual violations are labelled after rape – an offence which cannot legally be committed in virtual reality – then the term is devalued by its merely symbolic meaning. Perhaps the authors’ aim can be achieved by a reversal of their ‘severity’ proposition. Instead of all sexual offences becoming associated with rape, the focus should be on the fact that not every sexual offence is rape. Most sexual offences are covert and socially insidious. Locker room antics have no place in the real world. A sexual offence does not need to be rape to give you a criminal record.
Does sexual assault exist in virtual reality?
Once again, the inability to physically touch another person is the significant hurdle in applying the present law under Section 3 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003. However, touching is defined in Section 79 of the Act as including touching with any part of the body, with anything else, or through anything. This leaves open the possibility for indirect contact, with an analogy potentially arising in case law. In the case of R v H [2005] EWCA Crim 732, the test for sexual assault was satisfied in circumstances where a man uttered the words ‘fancy a shag?’, and shortly thereafter, grabbed his victim’s trouser pocket. Both personal clothing and a personal avatar, while being physically inanimate, are intertwined with the personality of the individual. If touching a person’s clothing satisfies the test for physical touch, it is not inconceivable that touching a person’s avatar while making sexual comments would similarly count as a sexual assault. But perhaps the law need not strain itself. With virtual reality poised to incorporate haptic technologies such as gloves and bodysuits, kinaesthetic interactions will lead to direct physical sensation which may make applying the present law more straightforward.
If we were to broaden the existing legislation to include virtual sexual assault, this would seemingly involve drawing a parity in the victim experience between the two forms of the offence. Much like this issue in relation to rape, this is dangerous territory. Opening the aperture of the offence by conflating virtual and real-world offending risks undermining the experience of the victims who did not have the option of removing a virtual reality headset and terminating an adverse interaction. While similar emotions may have been provoked, those who have experienced a sexual violation in virtual reality have not faced the inescapable physical transgression, the unpredictable threat of escalation, or the risk of pregnancy and sexually-transmitted infection that defines its real-world counterpart.
An alternative option to expanding the offence of sexual assault would be to look to other offences, or create new laws altogether. One option is to use the broad provisions contained in the Protection from Harassment Act 1997. Harassment offences are certainly adept at encompassing behaviour which occurs across online and offline mediums, yet the existing law falls short in requiring there to have been a ‘course of conduct’. This means that victims would need to have experienced virtual violations ‘on at least two occasions’ by the same user before the law can step in. An alternative could be a new law of ‘intimate intrusions’, as proposed by Professor McGlynn, which would encapsulate the ‘seemingly infinite variety of ways that abuse is perpetrated without the need to provide a distinct label for each and every different form of harm.’ [6]
Ultimately, despite the difficulties in reconciling the actus reus of virtual and real-world sexual violations, the mens rea of the perpetrator remains consistent. As James Cleverly, then home secretary at the time of the virtual ‘gang-rape’ investigation, told LBC radio, ‘someone who is willing to put a child through trauma like that digitally may well be someone that could go on to do terrible things in the physical realm.’ Therefore it is clearly an issue that should engage legislators and law enforcement bodies. In the age of the Online Safety Act, where a legislative focus has been on prevention – shifting the responsibility for user safety onto the platforms themselves – a path forward may be to move towards AI-enabled moderation of every interaction in the virtual worlds. All users could be kept in arms-length forcefields (‘personal boundaries’ already being an optional feature in the Metaverse), derogatory language could be sanitised in real-time, and every interaction could be automatically policed. If this degree of social oversight does not appeal, then perhaps it really is time to take off the headset and rejoin the real world.
Alexander Jurczynski, Pupil at 3PB Barristers
[1] Rebecca Camber, ‘British police probe VIRTUAL rape in metaverse: Young girl’s digital persona ‘is sexually attacked by gang of adult men in immersive video game’ – sparking first investigation of its kind and questions about extent current laws apply in online world’ (Daily Mail, 1 January 2024) <https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12917329/Police-launch-investigation-kind-virtual-rape-metaverse> accessed 10 August 2025
[2] Naomi Nix, ‘Attacks in the metaverse are booming. Police are starting to pay attention’ (The Washington Post, 6 February 2024) <https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/02/04/metaverse-sexual-assault-prosecution> accessed 10 August 2025
[3] E+T Editorial Team, ‘Children likely to spend 10 years of their lives in VR metaverse, study suggests’ (Institution of Engineering and Technology, 9 October 2023) <https://eandt.theiet.org/2022/04/20/children-likely-spend-10-years-their-lives-vr-metaverse-study-suggests> accessed 10 August 2025
[4] INTERPOL, Metaverse: A law enforcement perspective (White Paper, January 2024)
[5] Clare McGlynn, Carlotta Rigotti, ‘From Virtual Rape to Meta-rape: Sexual Violence, Criminal Law and the Metaverse’ (Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, 8 April 2025) <https://doi.org/10.1093/ojls/gqaf009> accessed 10 August 2025
[6] Clare McGlynn, ‘Towards a New Criminal Offence of Intimate Intrusions’ (Fem Leg Stud, 13 June 2024) <https://doi.org/10.1007/s10691-024-09547-y> accessed 10 August 2025
