Meta’s Facebook is hosting over a thousand adverts for childlike sex dolls on its platform, bringing the big tech company’s attitude to child safety into question.
A package arrived at a major London airport in 2021. For whatever reason, Border Force officers were forced to investigate its contents, and what they found was shocking.
Upon opening the package, the officers found a motionless naked child lying in the box, not breathing.
The officers soon realized this “child” wasn’t a real person but an extremely lifelike doll.
Naturally, the border officers looked to see who the package was addressed to and found it was on its way to a man called Wesley Clarke from Romford, east London.
Following the incident, police descended upon Clarke’s residence and uncovered two more childlike dolls. One appeared to be 13 years old, while the other looked around 15.
While the scene was already unsettling, authorities found that one of the dolls was naked and the other was dressed only in a black skirt, Essex Live reports.
As law enforcement searched Clarke’s home, they found four replacement eyes and an array of clothing labelled for small children.
During interrogation, Clarke admitted that these were sex dolls. However, he didn’t think they would look like children and only brought them because the smaller size was cheaper.
Later, Clarke confessed to having a sexual preoccupation with school uniforms and schoolchildren.
It was later discovered that multiple devices belonging to Clarke contained 40 extreme child pornography (Category A) and 17,000 prohibited cartoons depicting children.
Clarke claimed that he bought the childlike sex dolls for almost $1,000 from the site “Lovedolls.”
However, it’s becoming much easier to locate these childlike sex dolls advertised as “companions” as they’ve been cropping up all over Facebook.
1,300 ads for childlike sex dolls found on Facebook
Groups of websites selling small dolls that look freakishly lifelike have been published across Meta’s platform, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ).
The adverts display the childlike dolls in overtly sexualized poses, with some even holding balloons or teddy bears.
While this type of content definitely violates Meta’s rules and regulations, some 20 adverts have evaded detection and remain on the platform, TBIJ reports.
It’s not a crime to own a childlike sex doll. However, possible offences include having the doll to distribute, sending an obscene object by post, or posting the obscene article, the Crown Prosecution Service states.
If owning a childlike sex doll isn't illegal, why is it an issue?
Many unaware people may believe that possessing a childlike sex doll will curb a pedophile's desire to abuse real children – this isn’t the case.
In the context of pedophilic tendencies, the activity can potentially escalate from fantasizing about performing sexual acts on a child to watching child pornography to touching and abusing a child, as discussed in JCS’s video on Canadian pedophile and murderer Michael Rafferty.
Therefore, it’s unlikely that Clarke’s urges would be simply satisfied by an inanimate object, and the urge to offend a real child could grow as a result.
This is also the problem with child pornography, like the cartoons of children Clarke had in his possession, generated using artificial intelligence (AI).
While the images may not depict real children, the pedophile is still indulging in this behaviour and may no longer be satisfied with images of AI kids as time goes on.
Meta’s increasingly lax attitude towards child safety
Meta explicitly bans the sale of sexual products on its site and prohibits posts that support or show the sexual exploitation of children, TBIJ reports.
However, the fact that some of these adverts have gone undetected shows how lax Meta can be when it comes to protecting children online.
Cybernews previously reported that Meta’s Instagram failed to protect minors from viewing graphic content via its apps.
Meta reportedly backed the EU’s digital adulthood plan, which aims to protect children from harmful content and online predators by requiring them to have their parents' consent before logging into platforms like Facebook.
However, the proliferation of content and advertisements that seem to implicitly encourage the abuse of children continues to seep through Facebook’s supposed stronghold.
Unlock more exclusive Cybernews content on YouTube.
Your email address will not be published. Required fields are markedmarked