WEBSTER COUNTY, Mo. (KY3) – A new lawsuit from a Webster County family claims a popular video game platform makes children easy prey for online predators.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court, claims Roblox lures parents into believing its app is an appropriate place for children to play. Attorneys are suing the gaming company as a means to hold them accountable.
“Roblox is one of those platforms that’s just very accessible. There aren’t very many safety measures in place. As a result, predators use Roblox as their hunting ground,” said attorney Melinda Maxson.
Maxson is one of many attorneys who have filed lawsuits against the company behind the platform.
“Sadly, I’ve talked to victims who were, unfortunately, sexually abused by predators that they met through Roblox many, many years ago,” she said.
Maxson says one of those victims is a minor from Webster County. According to the lawsuit, the family claims that their 17-year-old autistic teen was groomed by a person posing as a 14-year-old. That person convinced the teen to engage in sexually explicit behavior.
“Roblox has had the data available to them to show that their platform was being used by predators. So, we do feel that these cases are extremely viable, and I think that they are extremely important for the public to be aware of,” said Maxson.
She says these allegations have caught the eyes of lawmakers.
“We’re seeing a lot of momentum both at the state legislative level and also at the federal level. There are state attorneys general who are investigating this platform. The state of Louisiana has pursued its own lawsuit against Roblox. I think other states are poised to also pursue cases,” explained Maxson.
She says litigation will force the company to increase the security of its game.
“We’re hoping that the company is going to hear the public outcry and is going to take some positive steps to make both their company more accountable, but also address the fact that there are so many victims out there,” she said.
We reached out to the company for an interview, but were sent a statement instead that reads:
“We are deeply troubled by any incident that endangers our users, and safety is a top priority. We dedicate substantial resources, including advanced technology and 24/7 human moderation, to help detect and prevent inappropriate content and behavior, including attempts to direct users off platform, where safety standards and moderation may be less stringent than ours. While no system is perfect, Roblox has implemented rigorous safeguards, including restrictions on sharing personal information, links, and user-to-user image sharing, and prohibiting sexual conversations. We also partner with law enforcement and leading child safety organizations worldwide to combat the sexual exploitation of children.”
The following is the remainder of the statement from Roblox Corporation:
In addition, Roblox is committed to empowering parents and caregivers to help ensure a safe online experience for their children. We have many resources available that can help parents with safety and a suite of parental controls. Parents and caregivers can click here to learn more.
Roblox Safety Measures at-a-glance
– Strict Community Standards
– Can’t share personal information or links
– No user-to-user image sharing allowed
– No sexual conversations
– Parental Controls
– *New* Added age estimation technology & trusted connections
– Developed AI early detection system to help find & report potential critical harms
Additional background on safety on Roblox:
We work extremely hard to prevent bad incidents from happening, but we also should not lose sight of the positive experience tens of millions have on Roblox every single day.
We are constantly innovating and launching new safety features, including the most recent release of our latest open-source model, Sentinel, an advanced AI-powered system designed to help detect child endangerment interactions early for faster intervention.
As part of our open-source safety toolkit, Sentinel expands the arsenal of tools we have to detect and act on these potentially serious violations. In the first half of 2025, Sentinel helped Roblox’s team submit approximately 1,200 reports to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Read more in this blog post.
We have a range of safety features to guard against predatory behavior.
Our Community Standards set clear expectations for how to behave on Roblox and define restricted experiences. They require that everyone treat each other with civility and respect and help keep everyone safe by prohibiting content and behavior that may be inappropriate or harmful. Our standards are more stringent than most, if not all, platforms.
Our Trust and Safety team uses these Standards to moderate content and respond to abuse reports from users.
These standards specifically ban users from engaging in sexual conversation with or soliciting sexual material from minors.
If any users are found to be violating these standards, they may be suspended or removed from the platform. Roblox also works proactively with authorities to report cases of violent threats, child endangerment, or other serious real-world harm, and we partner with NCMEC.
We have a large, expertly trained team with thousands of members dedicated to protecting our users and monitoring 24/7 for inappropriate content. Our Trust & Safety team takes swift action (typically within minutes) to address any content or behavior that violates our Terms of Use or Community Standards.
Violative material and accounts are removed through AI scans, user flags, and proactive monitoring, with a dedicated team focused on enforcement and swift removal.
Very significantly, users under 13 can not directly message others on Roblox, outside of games or experiences. They are also unable to directly message others during games or experiences unless the default setting is changed using Parental Controls.
We strongly believe the industry needs to work together to move the needle on safety, which is why we actively collaborate cross-industry to provide others with better tools for detecting grooming chat.
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