The parents of a 12-year-old girl have sued Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, and an adult attacker in Missouri state court. The lawsuit claims that Snapchat’s product design made it easy for the attacker to reach and manipulate their daughter, who was raped after meeting the adult on the platform.
Background
The girl began using Snapchat in 2021, when she was 11, without her parents’ knowledge. Although the app requires users to be 13 to sign up, the lawsuit says that 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 other teen girls from nearby high schools as friends to the defendant, Gabriel Joel Valentin-Rios, an adult who had no real-life connections to them. The app did not warn the children that connecting to strangers might be dangerous.
After the girl and Valentin-Rios connected, he began sending her unsolicited nude photographs. The girl did not want these photographs, 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. 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.
Lawsuit Claims
The lawsuit claims that Snapchat knew that Valentin-Rios had multiple accounts, including one he used to lure teen girls. The plaintiffs seek unspecified damages and are asking the court to compel Snap to stop practices that harm children.
A similar lawsuit was filed against Snap in New Mexico in 2024, saying the platform’s design features foster sextortion, sexual abuse, and unwanted contact from adults to minors. A judge denied the company’s motion to dismiss last year.
Original reporting: Dallas TX News (HLL/CB) — read the source article.
