Dear Friends:

This article discusses a video game developed in Japan. Evidently the
entire premise of the game is the raping of virtual women and girls.
Thankfully, Amazon.com is no longer selling the game. Yet, the fact
that a company would even develop such a product speaks volumes about
the normalization and commonplace reality of sexual violence against
women and girls. Truly this is an utterly repugnant product.

Abolition!

Lisa

Rapelay virtual rape game banned by Amazon
A PC game that allows players to gang rape virtual women – and then
force them to have ann abortion – has been banned from Amazon.

By Matthew Moore
Last Updated: 1:42PM GMT 13 Feb 2009

Withdrawn from sale: Amazon.com has stopped selling RapeLay, in
which players have to stalk and rape a family of women
In Rapelay, gamers direct a character to sexually assault a mother
and her two young daughters at an underground station, before raping
any of a selection female characters.

The game was intended for release just in Japan, but was on offer to
British buyers through Amazon Marketplace, the section of the online
store's website open to third-party sellers.

But Amazon has now withdrawn the game after complaints from users,
deeming it to be inappropriate. "We determined that we did not want
to be selling this particular item," a spokeswoman said.

Rapelay was developed by the Japanese production house Illusion,
which makes a number of sexually violent games for the domestic
market. Their other titles include "Battle Raper" and "Artificial
Girl".

A spokesman for the company said: "We believe there is no problem
with the software, which has cleared the domestic ratings of an
ethics watchdog body."

Keith Vaz, the Labour MP for Leicester East who has previously spoken
out against computer games that promote violence, condemned the game.

"It is intolerable that anyone would purchase a game that simulates
the criminal offence of rape," he told the Belfast Telegraph.

Rapelay, which was released in 2006, encourages players to force the
virtual woman they rape to have an abortion. If they are allowed to
give birth the woman throws the player's character under a train,
according to reviews of the game. It also has a feature allowing
several players to team up against individual women.


This message is forwarded to you by:

The Initiative Against Sexual Trafficking
c/o The Salvation Army USA
National Headquarters
http://www.iast.net/