Bakers Delight has apologised for and pulled a ‘chilling’ Christmas ad campaign of two young girls bound and gagged with lemon tarts after receiving heavy criticism it was a “porn-inspired abuse scenario”.
The advertisement depicted two young girls in Santa hats bound with Christmas lights and emblazoned with the words “silent nights” and was displayed at the Currambine Central Shopping Centre in Perth over the weekend and photographed and shared online.
Collective Shout – an organisation that speaks out against the sexualisation of children – condemned the campaign for “trivialising the issue of abuse and torture of children” and called for followers to let Bakers Delight know what they think.
“Did Bakers Delight consider how survivors of child abuse might feel about this promotion?” Collective Shout asked Facebook followers.
“This has gone beyond a joke about quieting noisy children with sweets. It normalises the stereotype of ‘noisy’ women who need to be silenced, in this case with food shoved in their mouths.
“What were they thinking?”
Bakers Delight issued an apology and had the advertisement removed following the backlash.
“As a family-owned business, Bakers Delight does not condone family and/or child abuse in any form and we are deeply concerned that some parts of our current marketing campaign may have caused offence,” the bakery chain wrote in a statement.
“Trivialising an important issue like child abuse was never our intention and we apologise to anyone we may have inadvertently upset.
“Listening and responding to feedback from our customers is how we continually improve as a business and as a result, we have instructed our bakeries to remove the poster as soon as possible.”
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