The virtual simulation of child sexual abuse: online gameworld users\u2019 views, understanding and responses to sexual ageplay

Carla Reeves

doi:10.1007/s10676-018-9449-5

Abstract

This paper explores cultural understandings of virtual sexual ageplay in the online world of Second Life. Online sexual ageplay is the virtual simulation of child abuse by consensual adults operating in-world with child computer characters (avatars). Second Life is primarily governed by Community Standards which rely on residents (the users of Second Life) to recognise sexual ageplay and report it, which requires an appreciation of how residents view, understand and construct sexual ageplay. The research presented drew on 12 months of resident blog posts referring to sexual ageplay: 263 total, with 91 residents. The analysis of this talk explores the cultural understandings of this banned behaviour and beliefs about the nature of Second Life which underpin residents’ likelihood to report sexual ageplay and so comply with the Community Standards. In considering these issues the paper is able to highlight issues regarding the unique cultural position of abuse against children and key concerns which underpin the reporting behaviour of residents. Key considerations relate to defining online sexual activity and child avatars; the moral status of ‘reporters’, and sexual ageplay as a form of edgeplay; belief in the harmfulness of sexual ageplay and its relationship to real world behaviours.

Highlights

Sexual ageplay refers to adults engaging in sexual activity when one or more are role-playing as a child
Online sexual ageplay is regarded as evidence of a sexual interest in children as the adult players of child computer characters choose to use them to act out scenes of child sexual abuse either between other adults playing as children, or adults playing as adults, or adults playing as other types of avatars
Contrary to Stoup’s (2008) more general work on self-policing and collective agreement of social norms in Second Life (SL), through analysing residents’ natural talk in forums it was evident that there is evidence to support that many of these foundations required to support SL residents in identifying and reporting sexual ageplay are present: there is a shared strong condemnation of the behaviour, coupled with an appreciation of the rules banning it, broad resident support for these rules and a willingness to report suspected sexual ageplay, and to encourage reporting by others. These foundations are undermined by resident difficulties in always understanding what ‘sexual’ constitutes or recognising ‘child’ avatars, as well as moral condemnation of those who appear to come across sexual ageplay regularly or gain a reputation as a frequent abuse reporter

Summary

Introduction

Sexual ageplay refers to adults engaging in sexual activity when one or more are role-playing as a child In real life, such behaviours between consenting adults may be considered as unusual, a fetish, or even deviant, but they are not illegal because they are all consenting adults (Richards 2015). While online sexual ageplay, in itself, has no direct involvement with real life (RL) children and is only a simulation or pretence of child sexual abuse, it is considered as having indirect harms. This is in light of gathering international concern round the anonymity and freedom of the online world which facilitates social networking and the sharing of real and digitally-created child sexual abuse images, as well as the potential harms of viewing fantasy images of such abuse related to child sexualisation as well as the normalisation of a sexual interest in children, which is argued to increase the likelihood of real world offending (c.f., Levy 2002; Kierkegaard 2008; Meek-Prieto 2008; Wilson 2009; Luck 2009; Nair 2010; Reeves 2013)

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