Parents sue Snap after 12-year-old daughter was raped by adult man she met on Snapchat, lawsuit says
FILE - The Snapchat app displays on a mobile phone with Snap Inc. in the background. (Photo by Jonathan Raa/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
The parents of a girl who was raped by an adult she met on Snapchat when she was 12 years old are suing the app’s parent company and their daughter's attacker.
Dig deeper:
The lawsuit was filed in a Missouri state court on Wednesday and claimed the social media company refused to disable dangerous features in its app or warn parents about potential harms it could cause.
12-year-old met 25-year-old man on Snapchat
Timeline:
The victim began using Snapchat in 2021 when she was 11 years old without her parents’ knowledge, according to the lawsuit.
The app usually requires users to be 13 in order to sign up, but the victim couldn’t remember what birth date she used to bypass the minimum age requirements.
A year after signing up for Snapchat, the app allegedly recommended the victim, as well as other minors from nearby high schools, as friends to Gabriel Joel Valentin-Rios, an adult who was also using the app at the time.
Valentin-Rios had no real-life connections with the victim.
After becoming friends with the victim on Snapchat, Valentin-Rios began sending her unsolicited nude photographs, the lawsuit claimed.
Snap Maps feature revealed victim’s location
Snapchat has a feature called Snap Maps which allows people who are connected on the app to see their friends’ real-time locations anywhere in the world.
Valentin-Rios used this feature to then locate the victim and then groomed her, the lawsuit stated.
He convinced the victim that he was actually a 17-year-old boy and eventually convinced her to meet with him in person. Valentin-Rios then allegedly raped the victim during that meet-up.
Valentin-Rios pleaded guilty to statutory rape and is currently serving an 18-year prison sentence in Missouri.
Big picture view:
The lawsuit claims Snapchat knew that Valentin-Rios had multiple accounts — even though it is against the app's policies — including one he used to lure teen girls.
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.
Snapchat’s past lawsuits
The backstory:
This is not the first such lawsuit against Snap. New Mexico sued the company in 2024, saying the platform's design features foster sextortion, sexual abuse and unwanted contact from adults to minors.
According to the lawsuit, Snap was well aware, but failed to warn parents, young users and the public that "sextortion was a rampant, ‘massive,’ and ‘incredibly concerning issue’ on Snapchat." A judge denied the company's motion to dismiss last year.
There are also individual lawsuits pending against the company, including one in Vermont on behalf of two 12-year-old girls who were sexually assaulted by an adult they met on Snapchat.
The Source: Information for this article was taken from The Associated Press.