Sexual rights, child rights, and the ethics of prevention: Rethinking the child sexual abuse doll debate.

This commentary responds to Cuvalo and Wekerle's (2025) argument for analysing child sexual abuse dolls through the lens of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and related human rights instruments. Their framing provides an essential corrective to recent claims that such dolls may serve as tools for abuse prevention or harm reduction. Drawing on empirical, ethical, and discursive evidence, this commentary examines the convergence between pro-paedophile online subcultures advocating for lawful access to child sexual abuse dolls and a subset of academic research that reproduces their rhetoric of "harm reduction" and "sexual wellbeing." It argues that this body of scholarship represents a normative shift toward a framework of "paedophile rights," which positions paedophilia as an oppressed sexual identity rather than a disorder associated with elevated risks of offending and co-occurring paraphilias. Recentring the debate within international child rights law exposes the fundamental asymmetry between the rights of children to safety and dignity and the purported sexual rights of adults who are sexually attracted to them. The commentary concludes that child sexual abuse prevention must remain grounded in the primacy of children's rights and public protection, rejecting ideological or therapeutic justifications that normalise or accommodate the sexualisation of children.