Amazon UK has pulled child sex dolls from their online storefront after widespread complaints from a watchdog group and others in Britain over concerns that pedophiles may use them as a "gateway doll" which would lead to the sexual abuse of children.

Over a dozen child sex dolls were removed in all, having been listed by third-party sellers.

"All Marketplace sellers must follow our selling guidelines and those who don't will be subject to action including potential removal of their account," said an Amazon spokesman in a statement. "The products in question are no longer available."

Amazon does not sell the products itself but instead receives money from the sellers. Dolls found on the website were typically three or four feet tall with waist sizes around 16 inches (41cm). In the accompanying pictures they were placed in sexual poses with descriptions such as "Mannequin Sexy" and "100% mimics girl's body". Several dolls were described as coming with "sexy lingerie". A couple from Durham were horrified to find that a child sex doll came up in the results for their online search for sex toys. "We felt disgusted and we straight away reported it to Amazon," they told the BBC. Twenty four hours later the couple had received no response from the retailer. -BBC

UK authorities want to know how the dolls were allowed on Amazon's platform in the first place.

England's Children's Commissioner, Anne Longfield, said that Amazon needs to explain what happened (Too bad the Children's Commissioner wasn't around during Jimmy Savile's reign of pedophilic terror, or while former PM Sir Edward Heath was abusing children for decades, - which we're isn't going on today of course).

Last year, a judge at Canterbury Crown Court dismissed ex-primary school governor David Turner's argument that a child sex doll he imported was not obscene. Turner, a former churchwarden, pleaded guilty last July to importing the child sex doll.

Responding to a BBC investigation, Anne Longfield, England Children's Commissioner, said: "These dolls are disgusting and are clearly meant to look like children.

"Not only do I, as Children's Commissioner, but the wider public also, have a right to expect a huge company like Amazon, to not only remove these products from their platform, but to explain why they are on there in the first place and ensure they can't just be reloaded having been taken down."

"Such dolls are clearly built for one purpose and that purpose is a clear danger to the safety of real children," she added.

Ms Stewart said the dolls were unlike those people might associate with stag dos and were the precursor to more sophisticated child sex robots, which she warned were “just around the corner”. “They are the weight of a seven-year-old child, they are not something that is the traditional blow-up doll,” she said. “(They are) very, very different – very, very more accurate anatomically.” The dolls, with their unnerving glass-eye stare, false eyelashes and crooked fingers and toes, often come packaged with accessories including a choice of wigs, a USB device to warm the spongy silicone skin, and a cleaning device. -independent.co.uk

The UK has seized 179 child-like sex dolls since March of 2016 as part of Operation Shiraz - an operation set up in conjunction with the National Crime Agency. Last July, a judge ruled that child sex dolls were obscene, and therefore covered under the 1979 Customs and Excise Management Act. That said, it is not a criminal offense to manufacture or own a child sex doll - just to import them.

The dolls are designed to be as lifelike as possible - made of silicone type material and weighing as much as a child, and made in such a way as to enable sexual acts to be performed on them.

NPSCC head Almudena Lara told the BBC "We already know that there is a risk that people using these dolls could become desensitised and their behaviour could become normalised to them, so that they go on to harm children, as is often the case with those who view indecent images of children online.

"There is absolutely no evidence that using the dolls stops potential abusers from abusing children."