Sick game puts you in the role of rapist

Sex assault prevention groups, politicians voice outrage

“Rapelay,” a Japanese video game, was recently pulled from Web sites such as Amazon and eBay, but anti-violence advocates are shocked it’s still available for download elsewhere.

As described on mobygames.com, “Rapelay” players take the role of a pervert who, after an arrest for molestation, sexually assaults the young woman he first attacked, along with her mother and younger sister.

“This is not what you want in the world if you want to end sexual violence,” said Harriet Lessel, executive director of New York Alliance Against Sexual Assault. “Does it talk about the seriousness of rape and how it destroys people’s lives?”

Yesterday, she and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn urged video game distributors to pull the game.

Illusion, the Yokohama-based software company that released “Rapelay” in 2006, states on its Web site that the product isn’t available for sale outside Japan.

At a video game store near City Hall, John Ormiston, 37, was buying “Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.” “Rapelay” sounded outlandish, he said, but thought other games weren’t much better. He recently watched a friend’s 12-year-old son play Grand Theft Auto IV: “He killed a cop, stole the cop car, ran over people, saw a woman yelling out, ‘I got crack.’ He jumped out, robbed and beat her, stole the crack and got back in the car.”

Amy Zimmer