Anatomically detailed, childlike sex dolls are illegal to bring into New Zealand whole – but they’re arriving here in parts, or disguised as small adult dolls. Customs wants stronger laws so it can seize them in greater numbers like Australia does. Hannah Brown reports.
Warning: Disturbing content
Frontline staff can’t intercept all childlike sex dolls coming into New Zealand because some are coming in in parts, according to Customs.
And the lifelike dolls, favoured by paedophiles, are also arriving disguised as miniature adult sex dolls.
Simon Peterson, chief customs officer in the child exploitation operations team, told the Herald that while the UK and Australia routinely seize part-dolls, New Zealand officers are limited to confiscating only “full-unit” dolls.
That’s because New Zealand’s legal definition of the dolls is narrower than other countries’ definitions, he said.
“Full-unit is our interpretation of ‘indecent or obscene’, which is what we can seize under the law: a full doll.
“We ask our frontline staff ‘If this was alive, would it be a child?’
“If the doll is short but developed like an adult we wouldn’t call that a childlike sex doll – just a short sex doll. Other countries do, and their [seizure] numbers are higher.”
Peterson said Customs had to work with the legislation as it was written.
“We need to be careful we’re not prohibiting the importation of things people would be okay with.
“We don’t have legislation here that says what a child sex doll is, so we have to be quite conservative so we’re not forever in court disputing people’s appeals about what we’ve taken. Clarifications in law would be useful for that.”
Peterson said since 2017 there have been seven border seizures and four post-border seizures of the high-tech, expensive and very controversial “full-unit” dolls in New Zealand.
By comparison, 47 dolls (inclusive of full and part-dolls) were seized nationally by the Australian Border Force during the 2024-25 financial year alone.
In 2019, a Timaru man in his late 50s became the first New Zealander to be jailed for importing one.
The dolls are manufactured to resemble children in terms of size, development and perceived age. They’re anatomically detailed, and made from materials that mimic human structures, flesh and skin.
They’re used for sexual purposes by paedophiles and their existence is extremely controversial, raising serious legal, ethical, psychological and child-welfare concerns globally.
According to Customs all the dolls seized in New Zealand were manufactured in Asia. Some were bought from large, China-based online shopping sites.
“They’re not cheap” Peterson told the Herald. “At least $2000 each, plus it’s expensive to ship them here.”
In 2023 Customs sent an intelligence analyst to the Border Five Intelligence Conference in Canada, which included intelligence-sharing on the child sex dolls problem globally. Customs continues to talk to intelligence and investigation contacts overseas about the issue.
So far in New Zealand, would-be smugglers have worked alone, Peterson said.
“We haven’t seen anyone try to commercially import them or anything organised-crime related. There may have been some concern up in Europe that that may have been a trend, and they tend to be ahead of us – so we’re keeping an eye on that.”
In 2019, Timaru man Stephen Heppleston, 58, became the first person in New Zealand to be jailed for importing a child sex doll.
Customs officers found the lifelike doll resembling a young child while they were examining imports from China.
Heppleston pleaded guilty to importing the child sex doll and possessing objectionable publications relating to the sexual exploitation of children. He was sentenced to 18 months in prison.
While the dolls aren’t mentioned in New Zealand law, the Customs and Excise Act 2018 prohibits the importation of “indecent or obscene articles” – interpreted by Customs as “full-unit” dolls.
Offenders can face up to six months in prison for trying to import one.
“The legislation does work,” said Peterson. “It could be better [but] we work really well with Police and Department of Internal Affairs and we’re motivated to make it work.”
By contrast, in Australia importing childlike sex dolls is a specific offence under the Customs Act. The maximum penalty if convicted is up to 10 years’ imprisonment and/or fines up to $525,000 ($575,000).
The UK has similar rules to New Zealand but interprets them more strictly, including seizing dolls based on height and childlike faces.
“Proportionally per capita we have similar numbers of full-unit seizures but [the UK is] seizing a lot more parts,” said Peterson.
“If you import the lower part of a sex doll, there’s no way we can tell that it is childlike.
“A part might be a flesh-like kind of thing. We can’t say it represents a child – but other jurisdictions do.”
It’s unclear whether parts have been reassembled in New Zealand into full-unit dolls. Peterson said it’s a potential workaround to evade the law, but Customs hasn’t seen it.
Peterson would like to see a review of the various laws that oversee child sexual exploitation and abuse so that modern loopholes to do with dolls, as well as rising threats from AI and the streaming of abuse, are captured.
“Other countries have adopted ‘crimes against children’ legislation. Australians do it well – they’re aggressive with it,” he said.
Eleanor Parkes, national director of Ecpat – a New Zealand-based NGO working to end child sexual exploitation – told the Herald importing part-dolls is not the only loophole New Zealand paedophiles have exploited in order to get a doll.
She said one adult anatomical detail will be added to an otherwise-childlike doll so importers can “make the case they’re not childlike”.
“The dolls are small, they are like children in every way, their skin feels like real skin, they respond like children, they sound like children – then they point to one feature, such as breasts or pubic hair, to make the case it’s not childlike – when everything else about it is clearly childlike.
“Some say these childlike sex dolls act as a safe outlet for people who have dangerous sexual preferences but that doesn’t hold up to scrutiny and actually the opposite might be true. They’re an indulgence and [accepting them] risks harm to real children.”
Parkes said the dolls are getting increasingly realistic and numbers of them are rising overseas.
“Let’s get that serious legislation in place before it happens,” she said. “We should take the opportunity to get our systems in place because New Zealand tends to follow global trends.”
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