iGame Radio

If you look at Dr. Carole Lieberman’s website (careful, it’s VERY PINK), you see a woman who has spent her lifetime so far catering to the rich and famous. She has published two books, has a radio show, and has testified in high profile cases, such as the Terri Schiavo and Roseanne Barr v. Tom Arnold cases. And now she has an opinion regarding violent video games.

“The increase in rapes can be attributed in large part to the playing out of [sexual] scenes in video games,” state Dr. Lieberman in a recent Fox News article. This article is targeting Epic Games soon to be released Bulletstorm, an ultra-violent video game that, among other things, gives points for particularly skillful kills.

This, as one might expect, caused a big upheaval in the video game industry which had never heard of any link between violent video games and rape. Wired got in touch with Lieberman and interviewed her several times, attempting to obtain some concrete evidence for her claims…studies, actual game examples…but received nothing in the way of actual proof for her claim.

Instead, what Lieberman stated over and over was that she “did not have time to pull them up…” or “…[didn't] have the time to do that right now.” She could not name a single relevant video game, and could only, after Wired’s Jason Schreier contacted her again, provide one study (“Violent Video Game Effects on Aggression, Empathy and Prosocial Behavior in Eastern and Western Countries”) which in fact did not provide any connection at all to violence and rape.

But in the Wired interview, Lieberman took one step further into a seeming larger fantasy world regarding links of violence and rape. She stated that “games like Bulletstorm cause violent behavior and, since rape is a violent crime, ‘Ergo, there is no question that [violent videogames] cause an increase in rape.’ ” An obvious extrapolation one can take from this is that ‘since rape is a violent crime, Ergo, there is no question that violent actions cause an increase in rape.’

Does Dr. Lieberman actually believe that any violent actions will cause an increase in rape? That our prison system is full of a lot more rapists than we think, because every violent offender is, by definition, a rapist as well? This is a concerning thing for a practicing psychiatrist to claim.

One more step Lieberman took was her last claim during the Wired interview. When shown figures that revealed that rape cases have decreased since 1993, rather than increased as she had claimed in the Fox News article, Lieberman was asked to respond with figures of her own, or other statistics or studies. Her response, in part, was to say, “Obviously I know what I’m talking about or I wouldn’t be called upon to testify in front of Congress.”

We found this surprising, considering her claims so far, that Congress would have called her to testify. We also wondered who would have called her to do so. We found she made this exact claim also on her own website, and that this text had been echoed on several other websites as well.

However, we could find no evidence of her having actually testified in front of Congress at any time. No newspaper articles, no video, no posts on the Congressional website itself. We have begun to question with Dr. Carole Lieberman has actually ever stood in front of Congress to testify at all.

We hope that Dr. Lieberman will step forward to clear the air of previous false statements and come clean regarding her knowledge and history regarding violence in media and video games soon.