Directed by

Libby Spears

Legal Representation

Lichter, Grossman, Nichols, Adler & Goodman
Mike Adler
Los Angeles, CA
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Fish & Richardson
Elaine M. Rogers
Steve Stodghill
Decker Cammak
Dallas, TX
Ph 214-292-4049

Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP
Alexander Reid
Washington, DC
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view excerpts from the film » [ 5.5 min ]

Documentary Film “Playground”

Child Sex Tours… In the U.S.A.

Men fly into Atlanta, Georgia from all over the United States to have sex with children they have purchased online. In a small, affluent golf community nearby, the elementary school superintendent and local bookstore clerk are arrested on the same day in a sting operation by law enforcement officials seeking sex predators of children via the internet.

The daunting truth today is that wherever drugs are being sold in the United States, children, too, are being sold—American children. Called ‘runaways’ or ‘throwaways’, many of these children are being forced into prostitution—either by individuals or by more organized child sex rings.

In five American cities, from Portland, Oregon to Houston, Texas, Playground explores the individual stories behind the horrifying statistics, drawing parallels between the child sex industry in Southeast Asia and that in North America. Most notably, Playground explores the tragic truth that the only repository in this country for the child-victims of forced prostitution is the juvenile justice system. The pimps and the johns walk. The children, already brutalized, end up behind bars.

Exposed to the child sex industry while working on a film in Southeast Asia, filmmaker Libby Spears set out to make a documentary on the global sex trafficking of children—considered to be the most profitable organized crime enterprise after drug and weapons trafficking.

Following leads about children being trafficked into the United States, Libby returned to her own country. It was here—in and around both large cities and small towns—that Libby realized this global problem not only had universal roots, it had local ones. She decided to narrow the focus of her film to American-born children trafficked and sold for sex within the United States.

The result of her tenacity is a sensitive, heavily-researched portrait of the child sex industry in the United States.