“I hope we can go find the buyers” to prosecute them, says the High Commissioner for Children

This text corresponds to the transcription of part of the interview above. Click on the video to watch the interview in full.

Jean-Baptiste Marteau: We learned late last night that the Paris Prosecutor’s Office had opened four investigations in the name of the protection of minors. At the same time vs. Sheinbut not only that, against its competitors AliExpress, Temu, Wish… Platforms which would have offered these childish-looking sex dolls. What reaction do you have to see that justice is taking up this matter quickly?

Sarah El Haïry: I took legal action. I contacted the Paris Attorney General, for a very simple reason: there are children who are in danger. They are in danger because we know that there are pedophiles who have bought these famous, absolutely despicable dolls. To visualize what they are, they are the bodies of miniature children, 6 years old, 7 years old, 8 years old in appearance, or even horrors that are even harder to hear, since we found them, just a few hours ago, (dolls in the likeness of) infants with unfortunately articulated mouths. I’ll let you imagine the horror that this means.

And we took legal action because we want, and I hope, that we can go after the buyers and engage the chain of responsibility of all the stakeholders. The producer, the one who imagined, created, manufactured, designed these absolutely disgusting objects; obviously the platforms which served as intermediaries; and finally those who bought, because in France, it is against the law. It’s doomed. These are not trivial objects.

Because indeed, we are talking about Shein which is only the link between the producer and the buyer. Do you really think that we will be able to identify, arrest and bring to justice those who bought these products in France?

Yes, we will. And frankly, the fight today against child criminals is a fierce fight and it is a constant fight. We do it in the dark web. We do this on the possession of child abuse images and videos. We are doing this even though today, the possession of these child-criminal objects and child-criminal images has exploded around the world. That’s over 6,000%. And the possession of images, videos or objects are steps before taking action. We saw it in the horror of the Le Scouarnec affair, there were dozens of dolls that he had in his cupboards.

Alix Bouilhaguet: There is indeed a conviction, it was in 2020, for sex dolls, but at first instance. This means that there will be recourse. And what’s more, they say “it’s a fantasy, there’s no acting out, so it’s not reprehensible.”

It’s quite the opposite. Moreover, in 2020, in the Amazon case you are talking about, the Amazon company pleaded guilty. For what ? Because we went so far as to find buyers and we convicted men, since they were exclusively men, including one in Seine-Maritime where the affair was the most important. Today, having a child pornography image, having videos, having images, that sends you to court. It sends you to prison for some. Possessing child abuse objects, in this case these dolls, (…) falls under the law, article 227 paragraph 23, because they are representations of children. The law was strengthened in 2021, after Amazon’s conviction. (…)

The child criminals we track down on a daily basis, they train on these dolls. And then they find it bland, and they act on it. This is the reality. This is why looking for those who bought these dolls, in our territory, is an obligation to protect and monitor the condition of the children who are in their immediate surroundings. This is the tracking that is necessary. This is not exclusively a platform subject. All platforms have these horrors. We should take responsibility for all of them.

Click on the video to watch the interview in full.