Due to the nature of,
and implications of, this article no real names will be used to protect those
who spoke with me in regards to this topic.
Second Life is a fantasy
world where we can be and do whatever we, as residents, choose. Some people
engage Second Life as giants or superheros while some live out a more opulent
life than they could afford in reality. The range of possibilities are endless.
Most people live their second life as adults, but there is a very large
community of child avatars on the grid. According to most Second Life kids I
spoke with the kid community is relatively safe. With family communities and
teen hang-out sims there are a great deal of places for children to go and be
safe, living as children should. However,as with all large population groups,
there are inherent dangers and because we are dealing with child avatars these
dangers are considered more heinous. While the Linden Labs Terms of Service
(ToS) forbid things such as sexual ageplay, the allegation is that these things
still happen and that there is a large pedophile community active in Second
Life.
Not being involved in
the family roleplay of Second Life until very recently I was rather oblivious
to the issues that faced child avatars. I was aware of the term ageplay,
wherein an adult plays the role of a child for the purpose of engaging in sex
with an adult, but had never seen it first hand. A few weeks back, very shortly
after adopting a child, I began a search for a place for us to vacation and
stumbled across several sims that claimed to be family friendly nude beaches.
While I found this disturbing I also know that there are those who live a
naturist lifestyle and they too need places to spend time as a family but when
I mentioned these places to a child friend of my family she immediately
told me that it was well known in the kid community that some of those places
are home to predators.This disturbed me deeply and sparked my investigation
into these allegations.
I began my research by
digging through some of the history of Second Life and came across a report by
Britain's Sky News on a pedophilia ring they discovered back in 2007. According
to the report one of their journalists joined Second Life because he too had
heard of this activity and went to investigate. He soon found that, according
to his report, there was a virtual playground hidden away behind a strip mall,
a playground where little girls who looked about 10 years old offered the Sky
reporter's avatar a variety of sex acts. This playground was called
‘Wonderland” which the reporter believed was a reference to a child pornography
ring that had been broken up by the British authorities. The response from
Linden Labs was that the area was not age specific and because, despite looking
like children, they claimed to be over 18 they had no intention of taking any
action. I’ve searched for this Wonderland myself with no results but that
doesn’t mean a similar place doesn’t exist, so I began to search the Second
Life grid.
Most of the locations I
found were relatively empty, and I made sure to check them multiple times at
different hours. At most I found 1 or 2 children dancing or playing with no
adults in sight. One sim owner even messaged me to ensure that I didn’t have
bed intentions and made it a point to send me the sim rules. All had signs that
stated clearly that certain areas were either clothing optional or strictly
nude. Again, these were all advertised as Kid or Teen friendly. After several
days of searching and investigating I was left lacking any hard evidence of any
illicit activity, so I began asking some of the children I knew.
SLE: You've been in the
kid community for a while..how big a problem is ageplay or pedophilia?
“Jane”: It's getting
better than when I first started, but that's mostly because I went to all
the wrong places. Since then I've not had many issues. The schools and kid
community areas are all pretty safe, as well as most communities. When I was
first exploring I went to a place called little playground but it was a bunch a
pervs too. Seems like that's a thing in those kinda places
“Jill”: It really
depends on where you go. There are safe places and there are some that aren’t.
Most of ‘em it’s hard to tell until you get there. I just wanna be a kid. It’s
gross!”
SLE: Do you know of any
of those "wrong" places today and were you propositioned for sex
frequently?
“Jill”: There was a
beach, golden something or other. It was really bad. I couldn’t stand it. I
never felt safe there.
“Billy”: I landed at a
beach one time and everyone IM’d me asking some pretty creepy stuff. It was
gold beach or golden beach. I dunno, I never went back.
“Jane”: That beach...golden
sun is really bad, I was searching for beaches to take pictures at and stumbled
across that one a few months ago and it was constant sexual IM's. I'm not sure
if the littles playground still exists, but I think unless you accidentally
come across these places you'd have to go looking for them because I do find
most places now pretty safe.
“Jimmy”: I’ve heard of
this Golden Beach, but never been there. It kinda scares me.
Golden Sun Beach. I had
to find out if this place still existed and what was really happening there.
After a cursory search I was easily able to find the sim, if it was the same
sim at all.
I landed and looked
around the landing zone. There were plenty of signs and warnings about no sex
or nudity just as there had been at everyone of the other sims I had visited
but as I moved my camera around I noticed something. There was a statue of a police
officer stopping a naked man from entering one of the many shops that lined the
area. What made this more disturbing were the children standing inside that
very shop. They seemed to be chatting normally as though nothing was amiss.
I caught sight of a
large group gathered at the other end of the mall area and approached to see
what I might find out. They were gathered on a beach, some dancing but most
standing idly. There were mostly scantily clad females who looked to be no older
than teenagers with a mix of older looking males in the mix. As I stood I
noticed that there was no one talking in local chat. For a group that size, I
estimate between 20-30 avatars, I found that unusual. As I looked around the
beach I found an older man standing naked behind a couple of younger looking
girls who were sitting and reading on a beach lounger. Almost at the same time
I received an instant message saying:
“Girl”: Hey misters, you
wants a gud time?
I asked how old this
girl was and she responded with 18. When I asked why her avatar looked so young
she said:
“Girl”: I’m just small
for my age.
Frighteningly, this was
not the last time something of this nature occured. I visited this location
again to see if, maybe, hopefully, this was a one time occurance. Sadly each
time I returned there were more messages, all in the open, in local chat. A few
were from adults to children, some were the reverse.
That raises the
question, who is responsible? There is the possibility that this is happening
without the knowledge of the sim owner. It was clearly stated at the landing
point that this behavior was not tolerated and because this was happening in
instant messages and not local it could be difficult for the sim owner to
discover. The fact that I only received one message of this nature doesn’t
prove anything, it is not empirical evidence that ageplay is secretly accepted.
However, when taken with the anecdotal evidence provided by the child
avatars I spoke with it would lead me to believe something more sinister is
going on.
For the sake of
transparency and fairness I reached out to the person listed as the owner of
the Golden Sun Beach groups, a woman named Sunflower. I sent her my message,
innocently at first, saying: “ Hi Sunflower, I'm assuming you own Golden Sun
Beach? If so could you contact me when you are online, please? Thanks!” I
waited a full week for a reply that never came. I reached out again, via
Instant Message, with a similar request. Still no answer after a week.I sent a
final instant message getting no response before I wrote up an official
interview request and sent it in note card form. Within the hour I was
contacted by a woman claiming to be the CEO of the establishment. She requested
not to be named. While we spoke for sometime as I presented her with the
allegations of what was happening at her sim, she gave guarded and non answer
answers, stating only that these people were clearly trolls and that Golden Sun
Beach had “No Comment” on the activity. She asked, very clearly, that none of
our interview be reported in the article.
I did my due diligence
while researching for this article and found that, according to the kids I
spoke with, Second Life is becoming far safer than it had previously been and
there are far more safe places for people to role play as a child than there
are dangerous ones. That being said, there are still serious dangers facing the
kid community. This article is in no way intended to be proof positive that these
activities are accepted and approved by the sim I visited. It is simply a look
into the darker, more dangerous side of Second Life and the kid community.
This investigation has
opened my eyes to the truly sketchy people in Second Life and I will be bringing
you further investigative reports on other places that may seem to hide in the
shadows of the kid community.
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