Banning child-like sex dolls will not reduce sexual abuse of children, experts say

Minister Dilan Yeşilgöz-Zegerius of Justice and Security plans to ban sex dolls that look like children. She called the dolls “extremely undesirable” because they would encourage the sexual abuse of children. But experts have serious doubts about whether banning these dolls would actually reduce child sex abuse, RTL Nieuws reports.

According to the Minster, the fact that child sex dolls are legal is at odds with the responsibility to protect children. She believes that child sex dolls normalize sexual contact between adults and children - though the research she based her plan on also said that there is no evidence of that, according to the broadcaster. She wants to ban these dolls to prevent sexual abuse.

But that’s not how it works, experts said to RTL Nieuws. “People think pedophiles are incited by a doll to abuse children,” psychologist and researcher Wineke Smid, one of the foremost experts in sex crime risk assessments, said to the broadcaster. “If so, that would be serious. But there’s no evidence for that, and it’s unlikely there will ever be.” She considers it more likely that a doll would make a pedophile feel less need for sex with real children.

“It’s disgusting to think that someone is having sex with a doll that looks like a child. But you should only ban something if it’s dangerous, not because we find it unpleasant,” Smid said. “This ban does nothing to prevent child sex abuse. Thousands of children are abused every year. There is work to be done there. Not with a small phenomenon like child sex dolls.”

A ban on sex dolls would create a victimless crime, sexologist Erik van Beek said to the broadcaster. He also stressed that there is no evidence that child sex dolls lead to child sex abuse. “That people first have sex with a doll and then think: ‘I would like that with a real child’ is sloppy reasoning. It doesn’t work that way. Because those fantasies have always been there.”

“Most pedophiles are not child abusers. They know very well that they should not and cannot have sex with children. Pedophiles do not use a doll as a stepping stone to children, but because they realize that they must be satisfied with that,” Van Beek said. “They known they can’t interact with children, but they can still shape their fantasies in a private setting.”

“Someone with an adult sex doll will not suddenly rape people,” Van Beek continued. “A ban is more likely to affect those who have sex dolls because they’re holding themselves back than those who have bad intentions.”

Minister Yeşilgöz-Zegerius acknowledged to RTL Nieuws that there is insufficient scientific evidence to state that child sex dolls increase the risk of child sex abuse or create a normalizing effect. But she plans to continue with the ban because the sexualization of children is “absolutely undesirable and objectionable.”