Police are investigating a virtual sexual assault of a girl's avatar, the chair of the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners has said.
The virtual incident did not result in physical harm but caused "psychological trauma", the Daily Mail has reported a source as saying.
Ian Critchley of the National Police Chiefs' Council (NPCC) wrote that the metaverse - a collective name given to a range of virtual 3D spaces and technologies - had created a "gateway for predators to commit horrific crimes against children, crimes we know have lifelong impacts both emotionally and mentally".
In 2022, researcher Nina Jane Patel revealed she was abused in a virtual world operated by Meta called Horizon Venues (now part of Horizon Worlds), likening it to sexual assault.
Recalling the experience, Ms Patel told the same programme that she was "surrounded by three to four male-sounding and male-representing avatars, who started sexually harassing me in a verbal sense and then sexually assaulting my avatar".
She said they had used misogynistic language and "continued to touch my avatar in a way that can only be described as a sexual assault of my avatar".
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-67865327