Online shoppers were shocked to see Amazon allowing the selling of child sex dolls in France. The online retailers pulled down advertisements of the products after activists brought it to Amazon's attention.
Screenshots of the dolls posted on Twitter by performance artist Martina Markota showed them to be the size of a child – the only difference was they were sexually suggestive with some of them even without clothes. Twitter users called out Amazon for giving a platform to sell the child sex dolls.
Amazon Pulls Downs Ads of Child Sex Dolls
Some users said they wrote to Amazon France's customer care to notify about the objectionable product and urged them to take it down. French anti-pedophile activist group AIVI informed the authorities about the selling of the products, RT.com reported. The description of the products mentioned the dolls' "realistic three holes" and the sellers would provide "discreet shipping," the report said.
On Monday, Adrien Taquet, the country's junior child protection minister, told his Twitter followers that Amazon France withdrew advertisements for the sale of the dolls after he requested them to do so. In his tweet, he said that banning crimes related to children should be everyone's responsibility.
Consequently, Amazon France appeared to pull down the sale of the child-like sex dolls from its website as the link to the product no longer worked. However, the company did not clarify the matter. Amazon has a rule in place to ban the sale of "products depicting children or characters resembling children in a sexually suggestive manner."
In 2018, the retail giant removed more than a dozen child sex dolls from its website after British watchdog pointed out that the sale of such products may encourage pedophilia. The dolls were also on sale on Amazon U.S. for a brief time in March last year, but were pulled down after the media noted that the description of the products mentioned "child sex dolls for pedophiles."
