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Key points
- Many countries and states are passing laws to criminalize ownership of child sex dolls.
- Pedophilic men with child sex dolls often report non-sexual motivation for ownership, and develop relationships with the dolls.
- Men who own such dolls self-report less interest in real-world criminal sexual behaviors.
For several years, a complex social debate has raged regarding the effects and potential risks of ownership of silicon sex dolls, made to look like human children. Beyond the simple reaction of revulsion that many people feel to such behavior, there are real questions as to what impact these dolls may have on their owners, and specifically their risk of engaging in sexual abuse of real human children or participating in the consumption or distribution of child sexual abuse material (CSAM).
Everyone involved in these debates wants to protect children from sexual exploitation. Finally, the ethics of such experimentation has been challenged, with arguments that such dolls or robots should be banned.
Across the world, numerous men have been prosecuted for purchasing these dolls, typically from manufacturers in China. In many cases, the dolls were intercepted by authorities before delivery. And in many of these cases, further investigation by authorities found that the men had CSAM on their devices or computers, and the men were prosecuted for possessing such material.
In a few early cases, esoteric laws against importing prohibited materials were used to prosecute the men, and in some cases, the skin of the doll was argued in court to reflect the nude, sexualized image of a child and the man prosecuted for possession.
Currently, numerous states in the United States have passed or are currently enacting laws prohibiting the importation, sale, or ownership of such dolls, as have several other countries around the world. Unfortunately, at this point, we know rather little about the impact that such dolls may have. Based on past research with individuals who possess CSAM, it is likely that the effect is complicated, and that there may be little clear connection to contact sexual offending. Past research has indicated that factors of antisocial personality, low empathy, impaired impulse control, and substance abuse have a greater likelihood to increase risk of sexual abuse of children, compared to possessing CSAM.
In August of 2022, researchers Harper and Lievesley published in The Archives of Sexual Behavior, after comparing the psychology of persons sexually attracted to children who owned child sex dolls, to those who did not. The researchers recruited online and found 85 individuals who owned such dolls, whose results they then compared to 120 individuals who did not. All of these individuals self-reported sexual interest in children. About 80 percent of the individuals who did not own such dolls reported interest in having one. Surprisingly, sexual reasons for ownership were not the primary reported motivations – emotional intimacy, companionship and fantasy play were endorsed as frequently as sexual interests. The owners of such dolls did report that they were sexual with the dolls more frequently than with adult human partners, compared to non-owners.
But, surprisingly, the owners of such dolls were found to be less antisocial and reported less arousal at the idea of actually sexually abusing a child, compared to those who did not own such dolls. Given that antisocial traits are a high predictor of contact sex offending against children, and that the owners of such dolls appear to have a high level of emotional and relational connection to the dolls, it suggests that owning such dolls may not significantly predict a higher risk of offending against children. Child doll owners were more likely to have odd personality types, which might interfere in them having normal human relationships, and create greater loneliness, perhaps motivating ownership of dolls with whom they can have one-sided fantasy relationships. When researchers examined the intentions, and past offending behaviors of the child doll owners, they found no results suggesting such individuals were at higher risk of future sexual offending against children.
A recently published study in The Journal of Sex Research by Desbuleux and Fuss went further, exploring how owning either an adult or a child sex doll impacted the owners’ sexual fantasies, behaviors, and preoccupations, especially in regard to criminal sexual behaviors. A total of 224 men were studied, with about 23 of them being individuals who possessed child sex dolls and had pedophilic sexual interests.
In this study, owners of sex dolls reported a general decrease in potentially problematic sex behaviors at large, including watching pornography or visiting sex workers, though men who had adult human intimate relationships experienced less of such effect. Men with pedophilic tendencies reported the greatest decrease in compulsive or problematic sexual behaviors, from owning a child sex doll.
Consistent with Harper and Lievesley, the current research found that men who owned and used child sex dolls reported decreased interest in real-world sexual offending against children and greater likelihood of exploring their illegal fantasies with the doll.
Unfortunately, all current studies of the impact of child sex doll ownership share significant limitations. All are self-report, in terms of both ownership of dolls, as well as real-world sexual and criminal behaviors. They are correlational and do not include longitudinal data that follows these individuals over time, to best minimize the effects of retrospective reports. Finally, they are based only on those individuals who actually possess such dolls, and, given the significant expense of such dolls (over $2000), this population seems unlikely to be a true reflection of men at risk for sexual offending.
Finally, given that many arrests of individuals with child sex dolls appear to have also found that such men are at risk of possessing illegal recordings of child sexual abuse material, future research may need to explore this behavior as well, and attempt to sort out the effects of the doll, from the effects or impact of illegal pornography. As a result, we simply cannot draw any real conclusions about the impact of these dolls at this time.
However, combined, these two studies do raise potential challenges to social and legal concerns that these dolls may increase the likelihood of engaging in sexual abuse of real children. The dolls may decrease feelings of loneliness and provide an outlet for fantasies of illegal sexual behaviors, where no child is harmed. Attempts to regulate and prohibit such behaviors appear, at this time, to be primarily driven by feelings of disgust and anger at those who hold such desires, with the intent to punish, ostracize and eradicate those who have such pedophilic interests.
Everyone wants to protect children. But sadly, such social attitudes do not appear to suppress such behaviors but may increase feelings of loneliness and anger in such individuals, paradoxically increasing the risk of them acting in harmful ways toward real children. We may at some point face the challenging dilemma of choosing between our disgust versus actually reducing the risk of children being harmed.
