© Vincent Kessler / Reuters
The Specialist Treatment Organization for the Prevention of Sexual Offending (StopSO), Britain's only nationwide agency tasked with offering treatment to pedophiles before they act on their urges, says studies show there are 750,000 men in the UK with a sexual attraction to children. That means 2 percent of the population fit the clinical definition of a pedophile.
Comment: That's 1 in every 50 people. Not very reassuring numbers, to say the absolute least.
StopSO's founder, Juliet Grayson, says child sex dolls could be used in regulated environments to help pedophiles manage their urges in "safe and law-abiding ways" so that they never abuse a real child.
"Perhaps a 'prescription' for the use of a child sex doll could be given, alongside therapy, mentoring and supervision, could help the individual remain law-abiding and fully accountable for their behavior," Grayson told RT.
"If our number one priority is to keep young people safe from sexual harm, then we need to be open to new ways of thinking about how we can help those members of society who are sexually attracted to children to manage their urges in safe and law-abiding ways."
Grayson says many pedophiles "they have reached the end of their tether" when they start to use child sex dolls and "may have become suicidal."
She says the alternative to using child sex dolls is to provide no sexual outlet at all, which is a "riskier strategy."
Grayson says research shows some people are born pedophiles, and that 72 percent of pedophiles know they have a problem with their sexual behavior or thoughts by the time they are 25 years old.
"Society needs to reach a point where a teenager can say to his mom, 'I am a pedophile', and she will get him the right kind of help to manage his behaviors in pro-social ways.
Comment: Which is unlikely to ever happen. Pedophiles are perhaps the most reviled people on the planet, which means they're unlikely to tell anyone aside from other pedophiles (psychiatrists in some countries are required to inform law enforcement if their patients reveal they are pedophiles), which means law enforcement will only ever play catch-up, targeting child abusers after they have molested children. (That is, if they aren't caught with child porn first.)
Focus on prevention requires setting aside one's initial revulsion at least to some degree, which the vast majority of people are probably unable to do given the stakes involved. All of which means this problem is probably not going anywhere anytime soon.
"In the same way that methadone is used to stop people from using heroin, if the regulated use of sex dolls could help to prevent people with a sexual attraction to children from using child abuse images or sexually abusing a real child, then maybe we should consider it, however unpalatable that seems."
Comment: She has a point. Unsavory as it is, if it actually works, it would be better than the abuse of real children. But it's still hypothetical. Does it work like that? That would require actual studies and statistics, of which there are none at present. Potentially, it could make it worse. We simply don't know at this point.
Grayson's comments come as a former primary school governor and churchwarden was found guilty on Monday of importing an "obscene" life-sized child sex doll into Britain. He will be sentenced in September.
David Turner, 72, admitted to importing and having sex with the 3ft 10in (117cm) doll, which is anatomically detailed and correct. Border Force officers arrested Turner in November last year after they intercepted a doll and a fishnet body stocking which he was trying to import from China.
Border officials are reporting seeing more lifelike silicone sex aids, which weigh around 55lb (25kg), imported into the country. They can cost thousands of pounds, and are sold on sites such as Amazon and eBay, the National Crime Agency (NCA) has said.
The dolls, often manufactured in China and Hong Kong, are a "relatively new phenomenon" in the UK and should be criminalized, according to the NCA.
Border Force officers have seized 123 dolls since March 2016, and so far seven people have been charged with importing them, including one man who was jailed last month. Of the seven men charged with importing the dolls so far, six also faced child porn allegations.
Dan Scully, deputy director for intelligence operations at the Border Force, said this showed those who ordered the models often strayed into sex crimes. He added that those who had been caught importing sex dolls were otherwise unknown to UK law enforcement in having an interest in sexual activity with children.
"By identifying these importations ... what we've identified is a whole set of people with interests in sexual activity with children who were completely unknown," he said.
Does using photographs of children stop pedophiles abusing children? It doesn't seem so. Surely the same principle would apply to sex dolls.