can you be raped in second life?

[Quebrado]

I am very new to the community. I was very excited to have found such a place online. I invited my daughters to check it out. Two of the Three took to it right away. Now one of them has come to me saying someone teleported them against their will to a location they could not leave, and sexually assaulted them. She really loves the community. She doesn't want to talk about it. Please Help with some info. Thanks...

Quebrado

[Rolig Loon]

That is a scary experience, whether it happens in SL or RL.  No, you cannot be physically harmed in SL.  You can usually TP away from unpleasant situations and you always have to option of logging out.  Rape, however, is an emotional assault, not simply a physical one.  You can certainly be traumatized by a virtual attack, and that's a very real experience.  Please give your daughter all the support you can, and help her learn ways to protect herself, just as you would in RL.  Experiences like this can be opportunities to learn and grow. 

I have just sent you a copy of the Newbie Woman's Second Life Survival Kit in world.  It contains a lot of very useful information for newcomers to SL, particularly for women.  I think you will find suggestions in there that you and your daughter can use.  Good luck, and welcome to Second Life.  As in RL, there are places to avoid, but many, many wonderful places and very good people.

[Irene Muni]

 

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Quebrado wrote:

.... someone teleported them against their will to a location they could not leave...

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Odd.

- When someone wants telepor me I must accept the invitation, a Resident cannot force a teleport to other Residents.

- Any Resident can always leave a land (or a situation), teleporting or login off.

- Whats "sexually assaulted"? It is possible a verbal assault, of course. But I cannot be forced to use sex animations.

The Gold Rule is: if you don't want this situation, go to other place

 

[Charolotte Caxton]

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Quebrado wrote:

I am very new to the community. I was very excited to have found such a place online. I invited my daughters to check it out. Two of the Three took to it right away. Now one of them has come to me saying someone teleported them against their will to a location they could not leave, and sexually assaulted them. She really loves the community. She doesn't want to talk about it. Please Help with some info. Thanks...

Quebrado

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Teleportation against someone's will is impossible.

They could leave at any time by 1. Logging out of second life or 2. Turning off the computer

As her mother, you probably should get her to talk about it.

[Identity Euler]

Hi Quebrado,

Welcome to SL Answers.

Yes I can believe that althought anyone has all tools to escape in every situation in Second Life can stay and be insulted. It depends on the culture, where people are from and how are they educated. Eg if someone is thought to listen to eldery people will believe them also in SL at first. Some people believe other people in general and are really scared when they are treated badly in internet. I don't know what is this person cultural background and what is her age so you definitely should talk with her taking these factors into consideration. You don't need to talk about the situation but it would be good to talk about dealing with such situation in the future as well as learning how to fill in abuse report next time. You can also inform her that depending on the character of abuse she could consider filling abuse report now. You can talk about possibilities of escaping such situations next time eg.:

- teleporting out,

- logging off Second Life,

- blocking other Resident,

- ability of distinguish people that behave wrong and to whom cultural patterns which this person has shouldn't be applied,

- knowledge about TOS and the list of possible abuses in abuse report, you can read it together and you may ask which abuse she consideres as one which happened.

 

Good luck.

 

Edit

If you don't know how to block and how to use abuse report let us know in comments. Also write please if you have more questions.

 

[Nyll Bergbahn]

It is absolutely impossible to be 'raped' in Second Life. You can certainly roleplay being raped but quite clearly that is by choice and such roleplay sims are in adult areas accessed via age or account verification.

You can be assaulted by physical bumping and this could be by a guy with an erect **bleep**. Certainly could be considered a form of sexual assault but not rape. Someone could be tricked into sitting on a poseball on the pretence that it is something else, in other words being told it is the waltz but in fact it's a sex poseball. You can't be forced onto a poseball though, it's by choice and it's just one click to get off it.

It is absolutely impossible to be teleported against your will anywhere in Second Life.

Second Life can cause glitches that can prevent teleporting out from a location and if the encounter is unpleasant could cause some distress but absolutely nothing can stop you logging out.

So, while obviously something happened to upset your daughter and hopefully she will talk to you about it, she was not teleported against her will and she was not raped. Odd choice of words by the way in your question. You say 'teleported them against their will' not 'teleported her against her will'. Who else was with her? Were your other daughters there too? If so, maybe you could talk to them.

[Ansariel Hiller]

That's not quite correct that you cannot teleported against your will. Wearing a collar and using RLV, it's possible for masters to force a TP of their subs!

[Vania Chaplin]

The only way for someone be forced to teleport and use animations is if they use a RLV enabled viewer AND is using an attachment giving full powers to the other person (like a slave collar, but the scripts can be hidden in any attachment)

For the viewer, be sure that it has not RLV or RLV is disabled.

On attachments, say your daughter to be careful when accepting/using “gifts” given by others.

[PeterCanessa Oh]

Wassat? You never mentioned that before! Where does everyone else get a copy?

(Yes, you know I'm a man, I'm asking for general reference!)

[Peewee Musytari]

The basis of SL is that nothing can be done to your avatar by another person without you first agreeing to it. The problems arise when new residents (and even old one sometimes) get tricked into agreeing to something when they are not sure what they are agreeing to.

Always read permission boxes carefully before accepting them, do not always trust what someone "says" you are agreeing to. If in any doubt, decline.

When someone wants to teleport you or animate your avatar you get a request that you can choose to accept or decline, however, if you have already agreed to be someone`s slave and you are collared using the RLV system, that is designed for you to give just the initial permission to use RLV and after that your master can teleport you or animate you without further requests.

So in basic terms, it sounds like your daughter accidentally gave away her right to choose o someone else & she just needs to remove any collar or control device and be a bit more careful about what she accepts in future.

There are also Vampires out there that trick people into giving permission to be bitten as another example. You just need to be on your guard as you would be in RL.

[Innula Zenovka]

As Vania said, the only way that someone can force-tp you somewhere and prevent you from leaving is if you're using a third-party viewer with RLV enabled and if you're also wearing something that's designed to let people force-tp you and and stop you leaving (i.e. just using and RLV viewer and enabling RLV doesn't  do much in particular) and (at least with any legitimate RLV product) that you've explicitly told the thing you're wearing that people can use this functionality on you.

The simplest way for your daughter to check if she's got RLV turned on or not (and people do get confused sometimes) is for you to send her an IM while she's online, simply saying "@version" (without the quotes -- just @version on a line on its own).   If RLV is turned on, she won't receive the message but you will receive an automatic reply with details of the version she's using.   Then she can simply turn it off and relog, or use the official LL viewer.

If anyone does find themselves in a predicament from which they can't, because they're using RLV, extricate themselves, there's always a very simple solution.   Either turn off RLV in the viewer's preferences and relog or simply log out and relog using the official viewer.   

But, as I said, the only way this can have happened with RLV is if she's wearing something designed for role-play that's let it happen.   If she'd like to IM me (here or in-world) I can probably help her identify the item and tell her how to use it safely.

 

[Rolig Loon]

I'll send you a copy, Peter. It's a very nicely done guide to SL, available originally through the many sims that are designed to highlight women's issues but now widely available in SL. It was written in the pre-V2 era -- so long ago! -- but its basic trove of information and advice will be valid for a long time.

[Sandie Blachere]

True but it's stretching credulity, mine at least, to suggest that the daughter (all three daughters in fact, according to the OP) installed RLV viewers or activated RLV in Phoenix, wore collars giving permissions to a person or persons unknown without knowing what they were doing and were then teleported to some destination and sexually assaulted allegedly against their will. There's a big enough hole in that scenario to sink an ocean liner. RLV or collars don't stop anyone from logging off or clicking the big X top right of the screen.

I'm not sure you need to bring RLV into this at all. Could be the girl got herself into a situation she later regretted and is now greatly distressed by in which case she needs to tell her mother exactly what happened.

[Irene Muni]

It's true Ansariel But Quebrado was born 8 days ago. It is not impossible that the daughters are using a RLV system, but... Greetings

[Ansariel Hiller]

Never say never - James Bond already said. Greetings to Spain!

[Vania Chaplin]

Yes, in viewer that have built-in RLV, like Phoenix, RLV is disabled by default, but it is not so hard to someone convince a newbie to: 1st change the official for one with RLV, and 2nd to “help” her to go to “Preferences” and enable cool things, including RLV.

 

And, the RLV complaint scripts can be hidden in any attachments, in a skirt or a hair. A friend made a nipple’s piercing that if the owner wears it with RLV enabled, makes this friend owner of them and prevents them to detach it. And there is no pop-up asking for agree.

 

Without evidences, I prefer to take the story as true. If I’m wrong and someone is lying about what happened, the worst thing to me is to loose a few minutes while trying to help. But if it has some true on it, maybe my answer would have some value to someone – it’s enough to me.

 

[Charolotte Caxton]

@ Ansariel, if one were to be wearing a slave collar and logging in using the Restrained Life Viewer, wouldnt being teleported or anything against thier will be something they are wanting? Also, logging in using the Restrained Life Viewer and wearing a Slave Collar is something that would physically need to be done by the human that is controlling that avatar. So in all practicality, it is virtually impossible to be teleported against your will unless you have consciously and deliberatly given up control of your will to another real life human. Even if that person has done all that, escape is still possible by 1. logging out 2. turning off computer, or 3. unplugging computer from wall. (if its a laptop, close lid)

[Sandie Blachere]

I'm not unsympathetic as it's clear something happened but in order to help the OP, she being new to SL too, she needs to know how unlikley this scenario is. We're not actually talking one newbie, we're talking three newbies per the OP's comments, all aparently persuaded to install or activate RLV, all teleported simultaneously and all sexually assaulted against their will yet none of the three logged off, clicked the X to close the program or switched their computers off.

 

If she opens her daughters computers (presumably they have three for all this to happen same time) she can check what SL viewers are installed. If RLV it's instantly recognizable and if Phoenix,she can check if RLV is activated. That will answer the question whether RLV was involved.

 

 

[Innula Zenovka]

What a horrible thing for someone to make. Your friend, I am afraid, doesn't sound like a particularly nice person -- particularly because if he or she knows enough to make something like that, he or she must also know that an experienced RLV-user like me would realise very quickly that something was amiss, possibly as soon as they attached the piercing (if they've got RLV debug messages turned on, which I have a lot of the time), and know to relog without RLV, get rid of the thing and AR him. So his intended victims must be the naive and inexperienced.

[Perrie Juran]

I hate to be a skeptic here so would appreciate if the OP could tell us her daughter's age.

The OP's wording leaves me with the feeling that her daughters are teenagers.  While remotely possible for an act like this to occur on PG land, it sounds more like something that would have to occur on Mature or Adult land. 

If it is possible to 'force TP' a teen to a mature or adult parcel with RLV, then there is a hole in the system that LL needs to be made aware of.

If the abuse took place on PG land, then it needs to be reported to LL.  LL does save some information for a period of time on their servers and might be able to investigate and respond accordingly.

There is just to much going on here for me to not ask my question.  A teenager might panic and not hit the 'X' (close program) but someone who is older I would think would know to hit the 'X.'

And just to be clear so no one misunderstands me, I am not saying this did not happen.  There are just some pieces of the puzzle that have not fallen into place yet.

[Rolig Loon]

It sounds to me as if the thread has taken a funny turn somewhere.  Personally, I doubt that it's as complicated or deeply evil as some seem to be suggesting.  A young woman, a newcomer to SL, TP'd to a place where someone took advantage of her.  The most plausible explanation, IMO, is that she accepted an invitation to TP without knowing what she was doing.  It doesn't take clever RLV tricks to confuse a newbie. Any halfwit lowlife can do it.  She found one.

As for the rape ..... As I told the OP in my first post, you cannot be physically harmed in SL but you can certainly be assaulted emotionally.  I was surprised, myself, by an intruder with a rather intimidating animation and attachment in my private skybox just last week.  Despite four years of experience in SL, it took me several seconds to overcome a burst of panic and ban him.  A newcomer, especially a woman decades younger than I am, has neither the experience nor the range of defensive tools that I do. I am sure that her experience was a frightening one.

My advice to the OP remains the same. Use this unfortunate incident to help yourself and your daughters learn more about how to be "street-smart" in SL.  There are dangers to be aware of, as there are in RL, but they are much easier to deal with in SL once you learn how.  And by all means, don't let this turn you away from exploring SL and meeting all of the truly good people out there.

[Perrie Juran]

@Rolig - If by a funny turn you mean people questioning what happened, I would not really consider it a funny turn. I would consider virtual rape where an individual was 'tricked' into an unseemly situation different than the so-called rape play some people mutually consent to in SL. Personally I do not like either but would consider the former a serious matter, a violation of a person's psyche.

It was and is not my intent to flat out discount the OP's post. However both of us have been around the Forums long enough to know that people from time to time create drama threads that have no truth behind them. I was careful to say that I did not disbelieve what the OP posted but pointed out something that wasn't fitting for me in the story.

The problem is that critics of SL love things like this and lambast SL and virtual worlds in general using posts like the OP's. And while sex can be a big part of many residents life, it is not the only thing that goes on in SL. There are still many non-sexual things to do and enjoy.

Only the OP knows whether she was being an inflammatory drama queen or if this really happened. There is some good advise here if the situation was real. But if it wasn't real, then this OP was not funny in the least.

 

eta for clarity

[Rolig Loon]

@Perrie -- Please don't misunderstand me. "Funny" in this context definitely does NOT mean humorous. In retrospect, I should have used the word "odd" to make my meaning clearer. This IS a serious matter.

In fact, though, I was not referring to your comment at all. I think it is quite fair to ask how much of this incident or any reported assault really happened. Whether it's intentional or not, any report is edited as it is told and we all hear different things. The "facts" are rarely exactly what they seem. However, my default position is generally to accept what I am told, being skeptical about details perhaps but recognizing that there is a kernel of emotional truth at the heart of the report to deal with. Like you, I do not care to distrust the victim just because I don't understand all the details. All of that aside, my "funny" comment was directed at the series of interesting but IMO implausible speculations about RLV. Those don't pass my Occam's Razor test.

[Perrie Juran]

It does not pass my Occam's Razor test either. Especially because there has been no further response from the OP. But that could still happen.

 

I know I don't have all the facts. But with the few facts I have I am having trouble getting from point A to point B. I'm usually pretty good at that.

 

But I am not going to speculate any further.

 

Thank you for responding to me.

 

[Damien Avedon]

First off: Use a Linden made Viewer.  Second: Tell your daughter to QUIT (Log off) if that happens.  Third (this can be difficult): Names, Names, Names!!!  WHO teleported her?  WHERE was she taken (Top of the screen says where you are)?  Was she given anything and if so WHAT?  She doesn't have to tell you.  She needs to make a report to Linden Labs about the event; chances are if it happened to her it's happened to others, too.  Avoid anything with a RLV tag on it; it's trouble!

And yes, there are predators here just like in First Life.  It's just easier to catch them in Second Life, that's all.

[LittleMe Jewell]

34 minutes ago, BatGirlMeow said:

Hello ! 

I am a psychology student and I am conducting a study about violence (especially rape) in Second Life. I know that the incident you were talking about was along time ago and I hope your daughter is doing fine now. Do you think she would accept to testimony about her sexual assault anonymously ? All the data that I am collecting aims to bring awareness on the consequences of violence in virtual reality. 

Thank you and have a good day !

You've pulled up a thread that is more than 6 years old.  I'd suggest you contact the user directly either via a Forum Message or inworld IM.