Roblox, Snapchat Grooming Allegations
According to the lawsuit, AW-0002 began using Roblox when she was only 10 years old. Her mother, seeing Roblox’s marketing, its child-like design and knowing other children used it, believed the platform to be safe for children.
However, her own daughter became the target of sexual predators on Roblox in 2024. Once they groomed the now 11-year-old child sufficiently, they moved the conversations to Snapchat.
One predator in particular, a 19-year-old who called himself “Fidel,” began having video calls with the child. Even after the mother confronted him with her daughter’s age and forbade him to contact her daughter, “Fidel” found other ways to do so through fake accounts and acquaintances.
Eventually, the mother discovered he had manipulated the child into sending topless pictures of herself, which were then shared at her school, causing the little girl to be the subject of ridicule and bullying, resulting in tremendous emotional trauma.
Her mother indicates that Roblox knew this was happening to children worldwide through their platform long before the daughter began using it. However, she argues that both platforms were far more concerned about profit, showing “reckless disregard” for the safety of children it knew were using their apps.
“Had Defendants’ defectively designed apps not provided these predators with easy access to Plaintiff, she would have never experienced this lifechanging abuse. Had Defendants implemented even the most basic system of screening or age and identity verification, as well as other commonsense safety measures, Plaintiff never would have interacted with these predators and never would have suffered the harm that she did.”
– AW-GAL-0002 v. Roblox Corporation et al
The lawsuit indicates the girl suffered “profound harm” as a result of all that has happened, leaving her with anxiety, extreme humiliation, shame and “a fundamental loss of trust” for others.
It presents claims of design defect, negligence, failure to warn, unreasonable design, negligent undertaking, negligence – failure to warn, fraudulent concealment and misrepresentation, and negligent misrepresentation.
Roblox Child Exploitation Lawsuits
The complaint will be consolidated with similar Roblox child exploitation lawsuits currently centralized in the Northern District of California before U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg for coordinated discovery and pretrial proceedings.
Hundreds of claims have been filed to date, and the litigation is expected to continue to grow in the coming weeks and months. Judge Seeborg is also likely to call for “bellwether trials,” where the parties select and prepare a few cases, determined to be representative of the litigation as a whole, for early trial dates. These bellwether trials are typically used to gauge how juries may respond to evidence and testimony likely to be repeated throughout the litigation.
However, if the parties have not reached a settlement agreement or other resolution after the bellwether trials and pretrial proceedings have concluded, Judge Seeborg would likely begin remanding cases back to their original district courts for individual dates.
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