Social media giant Meta has profited from over 1,300 ads from websites promoting child-like sex dolls despite the ban on importing them to the UK, a joint investigation between the Mirror and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism has found.
Sickening sex dolls that look like kids are being advertised for sale on Facebook.
A group of websites touting small models with overtly childlike features have published over 1,300 ads on the social media platform. They are alarmingly realistic in appearance and many ads use photos in sexualised poses, some holding balloons or teddy bears. The National Crime Agency warns the creepy imports “pose a significant risk to children”. And a former cop told us: “Anyone who buys one of these dolls should be a person of interest to the police.”
Ads for them breach the rules of Facebook’s parent company Meta and most had been taken down. But Meta continued to receive money for every new one published. They were discovered in a joint probe by the Sunday Mirror and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. A spokesman for Meta said: “Ads that violate our policies have no place on our platform. We’ve removed the content brought to our attention.”
It is not a crime in the UK to own a childlike sex doll but Crown Prosecution Service guidance suggests that someone could be breaking the law by importing or selling them, or by sending one in the post. These dolls are being sold by a website that has been promoting its services using Facebook ads.
Investigations found six Facebook pages run by admins based in Poland, Indonesia, India and other undisclosed locations. These pages only post ads for sex dolls and have more than 600 followers in total. They publish new ads every day, some staying up for a couple of weeks at a time.
The bureau found around 20 that had been published since November 2024 and were still listed on Meta’s ad library, suggesting that they had evaded the platform’s takedown processes. Half a dozen adverts were active on the platform last week. In one sick complaint, a Facebook user complained their doll’s finger joints were not lifelike enough. The anonymous person wrote on the site: “To tell the truth [the 120cm doll] is not as the same level of precision as the 110.”
One website sells a “mini sex doll” resembling a small child girl for £266. It says: “Child sex dolls are illegal in most countries. But mini sex dolls are fundamentally different from child sex dollsu0085 they look like child sex dolls, but actually they’re not!” We contacted the site posing as a potential customer concerned about buying a mini doll and getting it through customs. The business replied that they “have a lot of clients from the UK and most of them have bought over two dolls from us”.
Ex-cop Jim Gamble, chief executive of the Ineqe Safeguarding Group and former head of the UK’s Child Exploitation and Online Protection Command, said: “If someone is going out of their way to purchase an object they can use to fantasise about sex with a child, that person is telling us they represent a risk. It’s like suggesting we go to domestic violence perpetrators and give them a punchbag with their partner’s face on.
“It should be stopped. We don’t know if the person buying one of these has previously abused a child but has no access to children and so is using it as a substitute, or if they are viewing sexual material while using these objects to act it out. Anyone who buys one of these dolls should be a person of interest to the police.”
Last month, a 43-year-old man from Romford, east London, was given an 18-month community order after pleading guilty to importing a sex doll as well as four other offences involving indecent images.
Australia, Germany, Norway and Denmark have criminalised the possession of such dolls. Meta rules ban anything that promotes “the sale or use of adult sexual arousal products”. Its ad review process mostly uses automated tools to scan the text, images and videos used in ads to find content which violates its policies.
The National Crime Agency – dubbed Britain’s equivalent of the FBI – told us “there is no legitimate reason for having child-like sex dolls”. A spokesman said: “It is our view that those purchasing such products pose a significant risk to children.” They added: “We treat the attempted importation of such products seriously and with colleagues in policing pursue such enquiries to ensure children are protected.”
