Chinese site stops child sex dolls sale

The sale of a child-like sex doll on a Chinese e-commerce website resulted in an online advocacy group putting pressure on the website to remove it.

The website did so, though 57 dolls have already been sold to buyers.

DHgate, which lets manufacturers sell their goods wholesale to customers, had a listing for a "beautiful young girl sex doll for men" on its website, among other sex dolls found on the site.

But netizens were concerned that the doll appeared to be of a young girl and cost US$178 (S$221) which could be shipped worldwide, including Singapore, reported Huffington Post.

Huffington Post reader sceptic meg wrote: "The thing that sickens me is that people are capable of this, making it, selling it, using it, they're all beyond contempt."

According to the doll's product page, which has since been removed, the doll is described as being "highly flexible" and 57 of them have already been sold to customers in the US, UK, Japan and Germany.

A member of New Jersey-based anti-human trafficking advocacy group Dining for Dignity (DfD) posted on the sex doll's product page on DHgate.

"This 'sex doll' is designed to look like a 6-7 year old little girl!... As adults we need to protect our children, not promote them sexually for pedophiles and sex traffickers!" DfD wrote.

DHgate's Facebook page was flooded with hundreds of messages criticising the sale of the dolls after DfD launched a social media campaign against the product on Friday, reported South China Morning Post (SCMP).

DHgate "is against the selling of products that promote paedophilia," a company spokesman told DfD founder Kelly Master in an e-mail on Sunday. "Product listings for 'child-like sex dolls' have been removed."

Ms Master told SCMP the widespread outrage was vital to bring about the closure of the online store.

"I wrote [to DHgate] first, they didn't respond to me," said Ms Kelly. "They blocked me and removed my comments [on Facebook], but then they started to get inundated with hundreds and hundreds of comments."

Ms Master said although DHgate had removed the doll, ads for similar dolls could be found on the biggest China-based e-commerce website Taobao.

Ms Master said she is preparing another campaign to pressure Chinese technology company Alibaba which owns Taobao to stop the sale of these dolls online.

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