Stacey Dooley Investigates: Saving the Cyber Sex Girls

Stacey Dooley Investigates: Saving the Cyber Sex Girls was directed by Joyce Trozzo and produced in 2015 by Elena Andreicheva and Joyce Trozzo with BBC 3, Twenty Twenty TV and Watershed TV Production. Camera was by Steven Mochrie and it was edited by Badger Cooper. Presented by Stacey Dooley and starring Marisol Ayad and Larni, Saving the Cyber Sex Girls is a very emotional documentary about child abuse that is being carried out in cybersex dens in the Philippines. Stacey discovers that children as young as two are being paid by customers, who watch via webcams, to perform sex acts for their pleasure- they are forced into doing it.

The documentary explores very powerful themes such as trafficking, poverty, exploitation and sexual abuse. It was shocking to find out that the customers include 750,000 people online at any one time and that 139 Brits this year so far have been investigated for committing these acts so it happens across the world. I never would have considered these numbers to be so awfully high and this is an issue I was not entirely aware of previously so I am glad this documentary has been made because more people need to be aware of this. Stacey finds out that this issue has arose due to a simultaneous rise in both poverty and cheap, high-speed internet access and these girls are sexually exposing themselves online in an act of desperation because it is the only way they can make money to support their families, and sometimes even their families force them to do it. This was very horrifying to here because it highlights how these huge levels of poverty are destroying the lives of these young children and this really upsets me because I can’t even begin to imagine how it must feel and it is the stories of the underworld like these that the media seem to ignore and they shouldn’t.

Stacey also goes to a prison and talks to some of the inmates, including Marisol Ayad. On first encounter, Marisol lies to Stacey, claiming that she is innocent but after undergoing some further research, Stacey realises that she ran a cybersex den where children as young as two were forced to perform for the webcams and when confronting Marisol for the second time, she admitted to doing so. I believe this shows that she is ashamed and embarrassed as to what she is done but also that she does not realise the seriousness of the issue and I hope she realises that what she did is completely unacceptable and sickening. There was also a tear-wrenching scene in which Stacey visits an anger management/therapy area for the children who have been involved with sexual exploitation to let out their emotions and this really emphasised how much they had been hurt, mentally and physically and the heart-breaking reality of this scene really put it into perspective for the audience as to how serious this is.

In conclusion, I think this documentary is really important and I would like to see the media cover issues like child abuse in cybersex dens because it is something that so many people are oblivious to and it should not be this way and we need to make a change. I thoroughly enjoyed this and I felt so many emotions throughout such as anger, shock, horror and sadness and I would highly recommend this to anyone.