So, really . . . who IS that nice man "raping" you?

Good question, I suppose. I guess, were I LL, I would be much more inclined to come down hard on someone with a sexual offence on his or her record, were they ARed for something analogous in SL.

And I can imagine situations -- for example, someone with a conviction for child pornography who was doing sexual age play here -- where it might well be relevant to RL law authorities as well.

As long as we have infinate anomyous disposable alts it's not worth bothering about, it's not like an avatar can get pregnant or catch a disease without consent.

At some point a society faces three choices with every criminal:

1. Kill them.
2. Re-admit them to society in a way that enables them to reform and be productive.
3. Force them to re-offend to survive.

Take your pick.

Yep.


Yessss . . . but I'd certainly feel more at risk if I knew that the person I was meeting had a history of violence. Wouldn't you?


Well, in my own defence, I tried to be very careful about distinguishing between D/s and rape sim:


My point here isn't that the two are the same; it is that, if Doms do it, why should we not think that those engaged in rape RP do it? The whole premise of the statement is that the two behaviours are different.


I am not advocating bans. Nor am I try to "save people from themselves." I am trying to add another bit of information to the mix that will help people make informed decisions about what they choose to do. That's all, really.

Linden Lab employees are not agents of social justice, or psychologists. The the job of the employee is to maintain order within Second Life, and the real life information does not help. The assumption that I assume you make is that someone who is a registered sex offender in real life is more likely to be a repeat offender when it comes to sexually themed violations of Second Life policies. That may be a reasonable assumption, but you're over-complicating the job of the Linden Lab employee. It is easier to suspend for first offense, ban for second, rather than asking that employee to do outside research and make multiple extra judgment calls.

(Thinking about it, it doesn't bother me that Linden Lab has real life identifying information on me, because I assume they only care to know for billing purposes. I hate to think that if I'm submitting an AR, or someone ARs me for some reason, that Linden Lab employees reviewing it will start Googling my real name or running it through databases to see what they can find out about me. That thought makes me much less confortable with the idea that they have my name.)

It would only be relevant to real life law enforcement if the person were actually under a current order prohibiting them from using the internet. But law enforcement would be interested in knowing if such a person used the internet for any purpose, whether or not that person was a good citizen in Second Life or not. In any event, I am uncomfortable with the government compiling any watch list of citizens who participate in an activity that may be disfavored or even morally wrong, but is nevertheless legal.

People can get hurt in SL in many, many ways.

IMHO, SL addiction causes damage (mental and physical) to MANY more people than sexual predation in SL does. The same goes for feeding depression through repeating negative patterns from RL in SL, damage to RL marriages through SL dalliance, and ... well, I could go on.

Also, is SL a good environment for sexual predation? Due to SL's nature as an anonymous environment where alts come and go, I would think sexual predators would find it less than ideal. Their intended victims need only log out to be gone, tracelessly, forever.

Sexual violence is such a loaded issue that I think one should be cautious about sounding alarm bells unless one is sure that SL is specially dangerous. Personally, I find SL to be safer than going to the grocery store.

Forgive me if others have been saying the same thing; I haven't read the whole thread.

You make generally good points, although I think you over complicate the process somewhat. I certainly do NOT want LL employees googling RL me, for any reason. But sex offender registries have been created for a reason, and that is, in part, to make it easier to monitor the behaviour of those on them. I honestly don't know how they can be legally employed -- can a convicted pedophile be denied a job at a daycare centre? I assume so. I would imagine that this varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction as well.

I can imagine a system that would require very little direct intervention on the part of LL employees at all, and certainly not active research, that would match certain kinds of "offenses" within SL almost automatically with RL conviction records.

I agree generally that list-compiling is not a good thing. But I also believe that conviction for a crime both bears certain consequences -- such as more vigilance on the part of the state -- and potentially displays a propensity for certain kinds of behaviour. And if someone convicted of, for instance, harassment in RL is demonstrably doing the same thing in SL, then they are causing damage here too, and I think it is entirely valid to take the RL conviction into account when dealing with it.

Of course. But the fact that one is more likely to die of heart disease doesn't mean that we shouldn't research cures for AIDS.


Perhaps. But the same can, in a sense, be said about many forms of RL sexual predation, such as for instance sexual abuse within the home. Why DON'T more victims report this kind of abuse, and earlier than they tend to? Why don't abused wives or husbands simply walk away? One of the ironies (and tragedies) of some forms of sexual predation is that they can actually CREATE dependencies in the victim, through mechanisms like shame and fear. As I've said in an earlier post here, many sexual predators succeed because they are masters of emotional manipulation. That's a skill that can certainly be applied to good effect in SL.


Yes, it is safer. I'm not trying to suggest that SL is especially dangerous, really: I am (as I've said elsewhere here) merely adding another factor to the mix of considerations that need to be taken into account when we make the decisions that we do here.

This gets dangerously close to guilty before proven innocent. LL is not the state and what someone has done in their RL should not be known by them. It is more like giving that kind of information to the cable guy.

LL cooperates with law enforcement if need be, but they would be even more bogged down if they were doing a criminal check to go with their AR response. Even a remote check would cough up similar names, those who verified as Elvis etc.

Sex offender registries are flawed. My previous apartment complex rented the apartment next to the playground to someone who was on that. Contacting the court and the police department did nothing as he had served his time. All the registry does is put a scarlet letter on those already convicted, it says nothing about those who have not been caught. I don't know that making such lists publicly accessible does anything more than fan paranoia.

In my RL job, we are not told who would have particular diseases such as AIDS. That way we don't treat somebody differently based on that. We are still expected to take universal precautions, and if something such as a needle stick happens both people are tested.

That is the only way LL can respond as well. We are all treated the same, even in disciplinary situations. IF something crosses into RL and ends up involving police (the needle stick), then LL can provide any needed information.

There shouldn't be any "pre-crimes" unit in either SL or RL though.

Stuart Smalley V/O: I deserve good things. I am entitled to my share of happiness. I refuse to beat myself up. I am attractive person. I am fun to be with.

Announcer: "Daily Affirmation with Stuart Smalley". Stuart Smalley is a caring nurturer, a member of several 12-step programs, but not a licensed therapist.

Stuart Smalley: So, I have M Linden here today and he's going to help me launch a 12-step program for Second Life!

//continued next week

Part of it comes down to my distaste for sex offender registries. A free society does not punished based on a propensity for crime, it punishes actual crimes. A sex offender registry does not represent vigilence by the state; it invites vigilantism from the citizens.

It's interesting that you use the phrase "convicted pedophile," because whether someone is a pedophile is a psychological, not legal, determination. But a layperson is going to assume that everyone on a sex offender registry has a psychological problem that compels the person on the registry to commit sex crimes. It is inaccurate and unfair.

If a person is to dangerous to release from incarceration due to mental defect, then the state should not release them. Otherwise, release them and let them attempt to reintegrate. Releasing them into social isolation is cruel and unusual, and a recipe for disaster. I am not even aware that they have been shown to be effective at protecting anyone or decreasing recidivism. Unjust and ineffective.

I also know that one's appearance in the registry depends in a large degree on how much money the defendant had to spend on an attorney. Many poor defendants are in the registry because they were charged with the wrong crime and couldn't defend it. Wealthy defendants never make it to the registry, because they hire good attorneys. (And, of course, offenders aren't always caught to be charged in the first place.)

But despite what I think of them, the registries exist, and Linden Lab could check the registries (I think they'd probably have to disclose in the TOS that they used your information for an unexpect purpose). It takes on expense and potential legal risks (the less Linden Lab employees know about any user's real life, the less likely they are to use information about a user in an illegal or tortious manner). And it won't make Second Life one bit safer. It seems like one of those things that a company could do to capture the feeling of "doing something good" without actually doing something good. It would probably cause a false sense of security, because my intuition is that if MySpace actually did block anyone who was truly dangerous, it was just a tiny fraction of of the dangerous people who are out there.

The more effective thing to do is to teach people how to protect themselves when they are online. The general public seems to have an idea that there are dangerous things and people on the internet, but don't have an idea of how to actually protect themselves. I see it all the time in Second Life, people saying things they think are innocuous about themselves, not realizing that they have just given a great piece of information to aid a potential stalker. Being careful with one's information when socializing online is far easier said than done.

Yeah, that's pretty much what I was trying to get at...
But we're starting from the assumption that there are these dangerous sex offenders who might be using SL. They don't need SL as a "gateway" experience to become dangerous sex offenders--they already are all that. To them, the point of using SL would seem to be arranging RL meet-ups by charming the unsuspecting, which is surely an easier trap to spring on the dance floor than in the dungeon.

There are all sorts of problems with the research in this area; whatever does it mean to find a pattern of porn escalation? As you rightly point out, it implies nothing about causation: there's certainly no reason to believe that demand for "hardcore" would decline if "softcore" weren't available. (Indeed, given the vast differences in availability of these materials, it's statistically difficult to distinguish "escalation" from chance behavior.)

But I'm unclear why this escalation pattern is even relevant here. If the topic isn't really about registered sex offenders using SL, but rather about SL creating new sex offenders, that's a quite different subject--with a wholly different set of problematic findings of dubious relevance to SL.

I guess there could be another way of looking at it, with registered sex offenders at some stage of rehabilitation being lured into committing new offenses by using a succession of more extreme SL animations, etc. Yeah, SL would seem a poor choice of hobbies for those people, much as living next to a school probably would be a bad choice for convicted pedophiles.

Clearly that wouldn't mean SL should change, which would be like razing all houses in a multi-block radius of any school, or banning peanuts because some people are allergic.

If instead the intended response is monitoring internet use of registered sex offenders, given the rate of recidivism perhaps that could be justified in some cases. (That sounds horrid to me, but for all I know, that may already be among the civil liberties lost upon conviction for such offenses; the measures are already quite extreme.)

But again, if the suggestion is that potential victims should be more vigilant in the dungeon than on the dance floor, I think that's just bad advice.

Your chauvinism is showing again, dear. You have previously indicated that you admit the existence of "shorthand" which allows for the omission of qualifiers - but then you go and (deliberately?) misinterpret the obvious "some" and substitute "all" because it suits your paranoia.

Pep (You must be hysterical; you made yet another blatant grammatical error in another post; does it only happen after you have read one of my ripostes exposing your bigotry?)

PS Your error: it changes the meaning of your view so that you think it is close to being sensible, but isn't!

Missing the point again? In SL no-one has to be a victim. Everyone has the option of switching off.

You might just as well argue that anyone who comes to these forums, posts, and doesn't like the responses, is being violated. Since physical violence is impossible in SL, then where do you draw the line between being influenced by posts here and having your mind screwed with? Is *that* a form of unacceptable intrusion inside your head, messing with your feelings, debasing your self-esteem, making you feel like an animal rather than a thinking person because you are publicly unable to present yourself cogently? Does that mean that there are any numbers of participants in this very forum that have an inescapable emotional bond with other posters that they think are abusing them? To such an extent that they are unable to "ignore" them, or if they do, they allow that irrational emotional imperative to over-ride their sense of self-protection and press the button that allows them to see a proscribed post?

Pep (It's not a question of blame, but responsibility for your *own* actions. It is unfortunate that some might be inclined to make the assumptive leap and suggest that because so many want to be "raped" in SL, then you might infer that a considerable number of those who are raped in rl "want" to be, too.)

I'm completely losing track of what this thread is about, so this will be my last post. You're comparing the difficulty of leaving one's abusive home, walking out with one's children, walking away from income, risking physical abuse, bucking societal pressure, with the difficulty of leaving a relationship in a virtual world?

If a person comes to a virtual world and finds themselves emotionally entrapped, without sharing RL info, they were mentally trapped before they ever arrived. Truly, there is nothing a virtual world could DO to protect such a person from themselves. They need RL assistance.Ah, this is meant to be a precautionary thread? I have to say what I've said in the past: this is a wasted effort, though well-meant. Anyone still reading this thread is already quite careful. Your work warning new arrivals of this issue is reaching more fertile ground. However, by stressing this relatively rare danger, when newbies are not warned of the addictive and life-disruptive nature of immersive gaming (and you know they are not), you may be distracting newbies from considering much more imminent hazards.

Like a criminal wouldn't lie?

Or use someone else's credit card?

I hate when people use tragedy to leverage some other special agenda.

Hmmm ... if I could persuade my RL partner into SL, "rape" RP is something we would probably try, so my natural default position is to assume than most of these "rapists" are men a bit like him (a nice family man who happens to be rather kinky) and most of the "rapees" (I will not call them victims) are women a bit like me (a nice family woman who happens to be ...). Of course they could be anybody under the sun, but the same is true in any online encounter... how is this situation really any different? I can't imagine there's much in the way of "rape" RP on SpaceFace sites, yet those are the sites which seem to hold the real dangers.

If I were single, it's something I'd probably try in SL with an anonymous stranger or two and I would not consider it any of my business what their "true nature" was, any more than it would be any of their business to know anything about me. The boundaries created by anonymity are exactly what makes SL roleplay as safe for experimentation as it is (pretty safe, imo). This is exactly why the prospect of "the MyFace crowd flocking to SL" is no joke. Theirs is not a culture of anonymity, and if that goes, so does a lot of the safety.

Any sex offenders in SL are here under the same ToS as the rest of us. If they are committing real crimes then let them be punished for those, by the proper authorities.

I followed the links you provided. The first one is about child safety online and the other two, while not specifically about child safety, discuss the issues primarily within that context. We are not children here. Often when you post about these issues I get the feeling you are somehow trying to "protect" women like me from their own sexuality. It comes across as patronising.

There's loads of thoughtful posts here. I hope this doesn't descend into a bunfight and get locked before I get a chance to reply to them all.

Ever since SL 2006 "Rape RP" has been the "in thing" for some reason.

I think it is mostly guys playing both roles, especially in the snuff stuff.

^^^THIS^^^ in so many ways......there's nothing left for me to write, this captures my feelings perfectly. Except to anonymously quote those who have also pointed out the many reasons one can end up in the RSO registry that have nothing to do with predation, but more to do with peeing in an alley (public) or in some other way offending sensibilities. I agree with this post, thanks for making it. I think the registries are inaccurate, and prohibitive to someone who's served a sentence, and is just trying to live, work, from day to day like the rest of us. I might feel differently if I felt the registries accurately reflected only dangerous pedophiles, and if they are dangerous, shouldn't be out anyway.

This was your comment regarding comparing SL with porn, and as such leading to violent crimes.

All I have to say is, prove it's a definite connection.

Do violent video games lead to violence?

Did rock 'n' roll in the 50's lead to dancing and *whispers* sex out of wedlock?

Did heavy metal lead to whatever the hell it was the PMRC was asserting??

It's my believe that these may be triggers for some people, but such people are fundamentally broken to begin with, and so if it wasn't these activities it would well be something else.

Sure. However, I don't think you can conjecture that the person is more prone to RL non-consensual violence because they enjoy simulated rape in SL. Such a prejudice could well lead someone to trust a person they really shouldn't.

I'll say it again: it could be anyone who's the violent offender. If someone is going to bring anything to RL, they have to be responsible for their own safety.



Notwithstanding the fact that responsible rape fantasy play *is* an aspect of BDSM, if you don't believe they are the same, why bring up D/s at all?

You could well have said, "I know for a fact that there are ballroom dancers who seek, sometimes even through direct advertising in SL, to bring the ballroom dancing relationship into RL. I think it would be naive to believe that those doing rape RP aren't trying, in some cases, to do the same."

I'll take you at your word that you aren't trying to demonize BDSM. It did seem to come out that way though.

I do not feel that one can scientifically correlate the percentage of known sex offenders to SL. There are those on the list that shouldn't be and vice versa. Some (if not, most) hard core sex offenders are not going to be satisfied by a fantasy representation of their desires -- hence why they use RL social networking sites to find RL victims. Transitioning relationships from SL to RL is not an easy task and most criminals go the path of least resistance.

Can an indulgence in seemingly mutually consensual SL fantasy sex games stem or encourage RL sex offences? I'm of a mind that if it keeps the violator occupied from performing any actual harm (whether in SL or RL), then it's perhaps a good thing.

I just wish to also interject that most real BDSM lifestylers can spot true abusers and will pounce on them (not in a good way) because they do NOT want any associations between their CONSENSUAL lifestyle choice and the criminals who walk the streets. The true criminals generally are smart enough to not even use a BDSM community as a jump-point for their crimes.

While I am not trying to belittle sex offences, I think any action that deliberately causes mental, physical, emotional, spiritual and physical harm is unconscionable. Other than physical, all of these can and do occur in SL just the same as they do in RL.

While I do not feel that there are as many sexual predators in SL than MySpace, Facebook, IRC, BBSs, forums etc. (the aforementioned allow for easier regional targetting), I do feel that SL is still a fertile ground for many other abuses.

In the end, we do what we can to protect ourselves and those we care for -- because "love stricken" people seldom see beyond their rose coloured glasses. I have the very unfortunate knowledge that an acquaintance in SL is being mentally and emotionally abused and sadly there is nothing I can do or say that will change that. But we can try.

And finally, on a long enough time line, people do show their true colours. Criminals do not wait forever and while some will have a master plan, they won't take too long to execute it. They need to get off eventually.

"Bad people" are everywhere. Caution should ever be the order of the day.

Absolutely right. In fact, lots of programs for the actually difficult sex offenders rely on role-plays to take them through their desires - and most usefully, out the other side too. From what I have seen of both the process of counselling, the nature of "sex offenders" and the way SL makes *participants* think about hte desires they are pursuing, I can't see access by sex offenders as an especially bad thing.

I also think there is a separate problem with *spectators* standing in judgement. We have to accurately identify the genuine sources of distress, which is quite a different process from accurately identifying the sources of information that's useful to drive a gossip process amongst the frankly, irrelevant.

^^^THIS!!!^^^ My keyboard is getting a break today, other people are typing all my thoughts for me. Excellent point here.

Woah Scylla! rape RP is not sexual abuse. RPing a "victim" is not being "virtually victimised". A Roleplaying "rapee" has sought out and consciously consented to that roleplay. I suppose if they enjoy the RP once, they may be more "vulnerable" to seeking it out and enjoying it again (same with cake, really). Taking it to RL is not so likely as it's a difficult RP to set up convincingly and safely, although I know several people who have managed it. I don't see how it could make us more vulnerable to actual rapists unless we give out RL information.