New VR Program Gives Domestic Abusers a Taste of Their Own Medicine

Researchers have developed a virtual reality program that puts domestic abusers in the position of their victims — and they say it seems to be working toward rehabilitating them.

In reporting for The London Times, crime reporter Rachel Sylvester said that she ended up having to remove the VR goggles because she "feared the male avatar was going to hit the female character I had become."

With pilot programs in six prisons around Spain's Catalonia region, the VRespectMe program is meant to help men convicted of domestic abuse learn how the experience felt for their partners.

"We want to improve empathy in men who have been violent towards their partners," explained Nicholas Barnes, a government psychologist in Catalonia who developed the technology, in an interview with the Times. "The early results are positive, we can see a tendency towards improving empathy."

Like Sylvester, many of the men involved in Barnes' program had visceral reactions to the virtual abuse they experienced.

"What are you doing?" the looming, pixelated abuser in Sylvester's simulation said as he approached her avatar. "Have you seen yourself in the mirror?... There’s not one woman out there who looks as wretched as you do right now, you’re disgusting."

"Aren’t you going to say anything?" the abusive avatar continued. "Typical you, I have to come home every day and look at your shitty face, that scared little puppy dog face."

According to the Times, more than 1,000 men have participated in the program since Barnes introduced it to prisons. Some of them had been moved to tears during the experience — and others, like the reporter, had to take off the headsets before the simulation was over.

Along with the name-calling scenario the reporter tested, others developed by Barnes, in tandem with Spain's justice department and the University of Barcelona, include witnessing a sexual harassment interaction in a bar and, convolutedly, a conversation with a victim before turning into her and reliving the experience from her perspective.

A man who'd taken part in the latter VR scenario told the English newspaper that it changed the way he thought about what he had done.

"I let myself be carried away by rage," the prisoner, who was not named, told his partner — and then himself — in virtuality. "I am aware of the damage I caused you. I let my anger get the better of me and I couldn’t control myself. Now that I know I made a lot of mistakes I am very sorry."

The discomfort from such interactions is clearly part of the program. It remains to be seen, as with other prison VR programs, how rehabilitative such tools really are.

More on prison VR: What Are the Ethics of Strapping VR Headsets on Inmates in Solitary Confinement?