The parents of a 12-year-old girl who was raped by an adult stranger she met on Snapchat have sued the social media company and the attacker in Missouri state court. The lawsuit claims Snapchat has refused to disable dangerous features in its app or warn parents about potential harms it may cause.
Details of the Case
According to the lawsuit, the girl began using Snapchat in 2021, when she was 11, without her parents’ knowledge. The app requires users to be 13 to sign up, but the lawsuit says the girl does not remember what birth date she entered and that children knew they could easily bypass the minimum-age requirement.
About a year after she began using Snapchat, the app recommended her and teen girls from nearby high schools as friends to defendant Gabriel Joel Valentin-Rios, an adult who had no real-life connections to them. It did not warn the children that connecting to strangers might be dangerous.
After the girl and Valentin-Rios connected, Valentin-Rios began sending her unsolicited nude photographs, the lawsuit says. The girl did not want these photographs and, at first, did not reciprocate, but Snapchat’s product design made it impossible for her to avoid such explicit content.
As part of its Snap Maps feature, the app also provided Valentin-Rios with the girl’s home address without her knowledge, according to the lawsuit. Valentin-Rios then groomed the girl, convincing her that he was a 17-year-old local high school boy, not a 25-year-old man. Eventually, he got her to meet him in person and raped her.
Valentin-Rios pleaded guilty to statutory rape and is currently serving an 18-year prison sentence in Missouri.
Snapchat’s Response
Snap said in a statement, ‘We care deeply about the safety and well-being of all Snapchatters, and our teams have worked for years to build safeguards, launch safety tutorials, partner with experts, and work with law enforcement to help prevent the misuse of our platform.’
The girl has been diagnosed with PTSD, anxiety, and depression, according to the lawsuit.
The plaintiffs seek unspecified damages and are asking the court to compel Snap to stop practices that harm children.
Original reporting: WPBF (Treasure Coast / Hearst) — read the source article.
