XBOX 360 Wire

British MP claims ‘Games let you rape women’ and blames Manhunt for murder

As most gamers don’t tend to follow the comings and goings of the British parliament, you probably don’t know there is a debat ongoing at the moment over the way video games are rated here in the UK. Basically, MP’s want to make the BBFC (British Board Film Clasification) more accountable for rating entertainment software.

Obviously a highly charged debate - One MP (Keith Vaz) has taken that one step further by saying that games let you rape women!

“….[snip]…However, someone sitting at a computer playing a videogame, or someone with one of those small devices that young people have these days, the name of which I forget: PlayStations or PSPs, something of that kind…

“Well, whatever they are called, when people play these things, they can interact. They can shoot people; they can kill people. As the honourable Gentleman said, they can rape women….”

As if that werent enough, Keith went further still claiming that Rockstar’s Manhunt game was responsible for the murder of british teenager Warren Leblanc - this was rubbished by the police at the time, and also discussed during the court case. Keith however seem’s to be more at home using this kind of language to get his fact across to his peers, rather than actual fact.

Margaret Hodge, Minister for Culture, Media and Sport rebuffed the suggestion.

“The game was discovered not in [killer] Warren Leblanc’s possession but in the victim’s possession,” she said. “It does not feature the use of a hammer, and it was not considered by the police to be a contributory factor. No such connection was ever suggested in court.

“Indeed, the prosecution and defence barristers insisted in court that the video game had played no part in the killing. It was reported that Leblanc was motivated by fear of a gang to which he owed money.”

I honestly can’t think of a single title in which rape plays a role - can anyone out there?

Posted by Bleem - March 4th, 2008 -