SouthernWorldwide.com – A lawsuit has been filed in Missouri state court against Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, and an adult attacker. The lawsuit was brought by the parents of a 12-year-old girl who was a victim of rape. The girl met her attacker through the Snapchat app.
The legal action claims that the social media company has failed to disable dangerous features within its app. It also alleges that Snap has not adequately warned parents about the potential risks their children may face when using the platform.
According to the details of the lawsuit, the young girl, identified by the initials J.F., began using Snapchat in 2021. At the time, she was 11 years old and using the app without her parents’ knowledge. While Snapchat’s terms require users to be at least 13 years old, the lawsuit states that the girl did not recall the birth date she entered.
It is further alleged that children were aware of ways to easily bypass this minimum age requirement. Approximately one year after J.F. started using the app, the lawsuit claims that Snapchat suggested her and other teenage girls from nearby high schools as friends to Gabriel Joel Valentin-Rios. He is an adult who had no prior real-life connections to these minors.
The lawsuit emphasizes that the app did not provide any warnings to these children about the potential dangers of connecting with strangers online. After J.F. and Valentin-Rios connected on the platform, he began sending her unsolicited nude photographs. The lawsuit states that J.F. did not want these images and initially did not reciprocate.
However, the suit contends that Snapchat’s product design made it impossible for J.F. to avoid such explicit content. As part of its Snap Maps feature, the app also reportedly provided Valentin-Rios with the girl’s home address without her knowledge. Valentin-Rios then proceeded to groom the girl.
He allegedly convinced her that he was a 17-year-old local high school student, rather than a 25-year-old man. Eventually, he persuaded her to meet him in person, leading to the rape. Gabriel Joel Valentin-Rios has since pleaded guilty to statutory rape and is currently serving an 18-year prison sentence in Missouri.
The lawsuit further claims that Snapchat was aware that Valentin-Rios maintained multiple accounts on the app. This is despite the fact that having multiple accounts is against the app’s policies. One of these accounts was allegedly used to lure teenage girls.
As a consequence of the assault, J.F. has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety, and depression, according to the lawsuit’s filings. The plaintiffs are seeking unspecified damages and are requesting that the court compel Snap to cease practices that are detrimental to children.
“This assault did not happen in a vacuum – it happened because Snapchat’s product design made it easy for a predator to reach and manipulate an unsuspecting child,” stated Matthew Bergman, founder of the Social Media Victims Law Center, which is representing the plaintiffs. He added, “Snap executives have long known that their features create a perfect environment for predators to exploit children, yet they have repeatedly failed to make the platform safe.”
This is not the first legal challenge Snap has faced regarding similar issues. In 2024, New Mexico filed a lawsuit against the company. That suit alleged that the platform’s design features contribute to sextortion, sexual abuse, and unwanted contact between adults and minors.
The lawsuit against Snap indicated that the company was fully aware of these issues but failed to warn parents, young users, and the general public. It highlighted that “sextortion was a rampant, ‘massive,’ and ‘incredibly concerning issue’ on Snapchat.”
Sextortion is a crime where an individual impersonates a peer and coerces minors into sending explicit images or videos of themselves. The perpetrator then threatens to distribute this material unless payment is made. New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez has stated that this scam has led to numerous teen suicides.
Last year, a judge denied the company’s motion to dismiss the case. There are also individual lawsuits pending against Snap. One such case is in Vermont, filed on behalf of two 12-year-old girls who were sexually assaulted by an adult they met on Snapchat.
