A 72-year-old man has been found guilty of importing a child sex doll after a judge made a landmark ruling that the doll was indecent or obscene.
In a landmark ruling by Judge Simon James, sitting at Canterbury Crown Court in Kent, a 72 year old former school governor and church warden was found guilty of importing a child sex doll to the UK in November last year. David Turner turned out to have 34,0000 indecent images of children in his possession to which he pled guilty.
The doll was intercepted by the Border Force on its arrival in the UK. The NCA, Ceop and Border Force launched a joint investigation in March last year which included examination by a paediatrician of some of the dolls seized to confirm their belief that the dolls were child-like in appearance and anatomy which they were found to be. It is worth noting that these dolls can be purchased on mainstream sites like Amazon and eBay. The do not require any involvement with online criminal activity.
The Judge in this case was asked to decide if the doll was “obscene” or “indecent” and therefore within the range of articles deemed illegal in terms of Customs Legislation which allows Border Control Officers to seize items which are indeed considered to be “obscene” or “indecent”.
In the landmark ruling, the judge decided it was. The issue in this case is the childlike appearance of the doll. Stating that the importation of sex dolls was a “relatively new phenomenon”, Hazel Stewart, from the NCA CEOP Specialist Operation Team highlighted that the National Crime Agency are aware that the purchase of such dolls can indicate other offences against children which indeed in this case it turned out to be.
Border Force’s Dan Scully, Deputy Director, Intelligence Operations said that their frontline officers and intelligence teams were “vigilant to emerging criminal trends such as the importation of obscene dolls. Adding “This work is part of the Border Force-led Operation Shiraz. The seizure of the offending item led directly to the identification of Turner and ultimately to the uncovering of his criminal interest in children.”
Despite being a new phenomenon, it seems operations are in place to seize every opportunity to intercept these dolls. It appears that the law enforcement agencies involved consider that what these dolls represent is a new avenue for the detection and investigation of child abuse. Essentially, what this means is that there is another tangible “offline” method available to detect “online” child abuse.
This landmark ruling means that as long as the Crown can prove the doll is a “child” sex doll, it will be caught in the legislation.
Given the high profile conviction of David Turner, it is likely that we will see more cases such as these emerging through the courts.
Although the joint operation by law enforcements agencies has proved highly successful in this it will remain difficult to detect this crime and for Border Force to intercept these dolls. They are not always obvious and often marked as another item. It is likely that some pressure will be put on the online retailers to curtail the activity but it will remain difficult, so the cases may be fewer than one would imagine.
Not surprisingly, Judge Simon James’ ruling has proved extremely popular with children’s charities who appear to support a general assertion that possession of such dolls supports the likelihood of a criminal interest in children. Although pleased with the decision, Jon Brown, NSPCC Head of Development is set on changing the legislation and stated, “The NSPCC is calling on Government to take action to criminalise the manufacturing, distribution and possession of these grotesque dolls, in the same way it does indecent images of children.” Quite how this will work if the dolls are manufactured or distributed in another jurisdiction or country is an obvious issue.
Mr Turner will be sentenced on September 8 to another flurry of media attention and public interest. I would imagine that both law enforcement agencies and children’s charities will seize the opportunity to further campaign on this issue and put pressure on the government to act. It may well be that we see a draft bill on the subject of “obscene” and “indecent” items in the coming months.
My professional experience, approachability and considerable expertise means that you will be in a very safe pair of hands when it comes to your defence, and my track record is second to none. I consistently obtain favourable results for clients accused of a variety of fraud, sexual offences, and financial and regulatory cases.
Serving Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, London, Bristol and the rest of the UK. If you have any queries about issues raised in this blog, or if you want to discuss your case, please do not hesitate to get in touch with me directly on 020 8108 7186 or fill out a contact form and we will get back to you as soon as possible.
"A good, analytical lawyer. He worked incredibly hard and devised legal submissions which won the case."
Chambers & Partners - Rated as Band 2
15 August 2023
We examine what might be the biggest change to corporate criminal law in a century as the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill (referred to as "the Bill") approaches the end of its course through the UK Parliament.There are provisions in th.