Importing these products is illegal. Possession is also a Commonwealth offence carrying a maximum penalty of 15 years’ imprisonment.
Available figures indicate the scale is significant, but difficult to track consistently. The Department of Home Affairs recorded 103 detections in 2020–21, 88 in 2021–22 and 29 in 2022–23.
An Australian Institute of Criminology review called for more research in the area, but identified plausible risks involved with owning them, including desensitisation, sexual objectification of children, escalation and use in grooming.
The appropriate response is therefore neither to dismiss these objects as harmless fantasy nor to treat possession as automatic proof of future offending. It’s to recognise them as potential risk indicators that may justify investigation.
Not a psychologist, nor have I done research on CSAM, but have been in a team doing addiction research from another discipline.
An orgasm is a biological reward for behaviour, and if that behaviour involves representations of children then they are being rewarded for sexualising child-thing, which would probably reinforce the behaviour or increase its value when real children are encountered. There is little to no evidence supporting what’s called the thermodynamic model of addiction (Ie. “pressure release”) and long term behaviours tend expand rather than being relieved with repetition.
Additionally it would be very hard (albeit possible in some way I assume) to do any ethical research on this to get the answers you are after.
Thanks for the information. Based on studies and articles I’ve come across, paraphilias such as paedophilia, sadism, and many others tend to behave like addictions; allowing oneself to indulge increases the likelihood of needing that “fix” again. Overall, normalising sexual interactions with child-like dolls seems like a bad idea, especially since paedophilic urges should never be acted upon to reduce offending against children.