Swedish children’s rights organization ChildX said on Monday that it had filed complaints against Amazon and two other e-commerce platforms over the sale of child sex dolls.
The complaint comes after platform Shein, founded in China, was threatened with suspension in France following the discovery of childish sex dolls and category A weapons on its site.
ChildX told AFP it did not want to name the two smaller sites so as not to direct traffic there, but one site was based in Sweden and the other in China. Swedish law prohibits content that depicts children in a sexual manner, and ChildX said the sale of these dolls could violate laws on the sexual exploitation of children.
According to the NGO, the sale of such products on global platforms risks normalizing sexual violence against children and increasing demand for content that exploits children.
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“We don’t want these sites to be allowed in Sweden, because they trivialize child abuse, which could lead to a real increase in abuse,” said ChildX Secretary General Ida Östensson.
ChildX’s secretary general urged the Swedish government to expand its blacklist of child pornography sites “to include more sites that encourage or facilitate abuse of children.” He called for these sites to be banned, as Sweden’s blacklisting is currently optional for telecom operators. He further believes that laws regarding child sexual exploitation should be expanded to cover the sale of products that sexualize children.
Distribution and possession of sexual images featuring children is illegal, as is possession of sex dolls that resemble children. The sale of these dolls should also be illegal, according to ChildX, but this has never been brought to justice.
ChildX cites statistics showing that in Sweden, one in four children under the age of 15 have been victims of solicitation for sexual purposes and nearly one in ten teenage girls have been victims of commercial sexual exploitation.
