Best wishesI’m under investigation from the NCA (National Crime Agency) for the importation of child sex dolls.
Apparently in early April one of my dolls was seized by Customs – I was not notified of this, and on the tracking, it seemed to freeze at Stanford-Le-Hope.
Oddly, the doll had been through customs clearance at Hungary, so had already cleared EU Customs, so why UK customs were involved, I am unsure.
Enquiries with the courier UPS resulted in information stating that the shipper had to perform all enquiries, which I passed on to JinSan.
They simply replaced the doll, and everything sailed through customs fine (Courier FedEx).
The same thing happened around 3-4 weeks later.
The dolls in question were WM 140cm dolls – one large (DD/E), and one small breasted (B/C) – and this height (140cm or under) seems to be the threshold that the NCA were using to define what is a c****like sex doll.
They turned up at my residence, and asked if I would come with them for a voluntary interview at the local police station, which I agreed to.
While this was happening they searched my residence and seized all of my electronic equipment for forensic investigation.
They queried me to see if the main laptop was a business machine, which I told them yes, it is the main business machine, so they said they would image that machine first, and return it to me after the interview. I enquired about the mobile phone as this was a main telephone for the business also, and the best they could do, was to image the SIM card and keep the handset.
They did inform me that they did not seize two old Nokia (non-smart) mobile phones that I could use – this indicated to me that the search was simply to find images of c**** pornography on my equipment.
As I have absolutely no interest in anything of that sort, I co-operated fully with the authorities to the best of my ability.
During the interview I was asked all sorts of questions, but many of them around certain images from The-Doll-House website – asking “Do you not think this looks like a c****?” and “What do you think about c**** sex dolls?” and “Do you not think a doll of this height is too small to be an adult?”, which of course were all leading questions, and I dealt with them in a mature way. Mainly I kept redirecting the police to the whole concept of Bust-Waist-Hip ratios and Head-Body size ratios (which I believe have been covered on TDF), and the police did conceded that there is no current UK legislation covering this area, just the antiquated law from the late 1800’s regarding importation of obscene items. I referred the police to the Conegate case of the 80’s but I suspect that they were unaware of this.
The duty solicitor who was with me at the time had encouraged me to inform the police during the interview (which I did) regarding my original request for clarification of the legality of importing dolls, specifically of 120cm height and under, as there had been reports of seizures at that time. I submitted this to the Home Office in January 2017, and after the statutory 20 days, I enquired to the status of the enquiry, as I should have had a response by the end of the 20 days. I was told that the enquiry had been forwarded to the Ministry of Justice.
So another 20 days elapsed, and I enquired again, and received the boilerplate response that they acknowledge receipt of the enquiry and will be in contact within 20 days.
So another 20 days elapse, and I receive nothing.
I draft a hard copy complaint letter to the Ministry of Justice, outlining everything that has happened, and ultimately I receive nothing back from them – so I have traded on the basis of their recommendations, which is nothing.
The police seemed interested in this and requested a copy of all correspondence, which I have supplied to them.
Post interview – the police took me to our warehouse where they were performing a search there also, and they went through the full inventory of 20 dolls that we had in the warehouse.
3 of which were seized:
· A YL-135cm with Head #8
· A YL-128cm body with defined Abdominal muscles – no head
· A WM-136cm body with heads #107 & #59
The rest of the dolls were over 1140cm so they paid little attention to them.
Although of note, there was a YL155cm with the smaller breast, and they had to get a superior to look over the doll, and he only paid attention to the tape measure indicating the height, and dismissed the doll as adult.
So another laptop was taken from the warehouse, and my full time employee Charlie left somewhat perturbed by the whole situation, but apart from that, we were told that everything seized would be subject to investigation, and then the CPS (Crown Prosecution Service) would decide if charges would be made.
In the meantime, I am aligning myself with a heavyweight (and unfortunately expensive) solicitor to deal with this.
In as much of an unfortunate situation as this is for The-Doll-House, it is much better that it happens to us, rather than a private individual of TDF, as we are in a position to go public with this if it goes to court, whereas others could lose their jobs etc.
Note: We currently have a WM 140cm Large Breast doll that seems to have been with Customs almost 2 weeks now, (was ordered almost 4 weeks ago, so before all of this) so we suspect that this has been seized also. We are awaiting confirmation from HMRC.
Feel free to share this on the forums, as it may help someone, somewhere.
Harem