The parents of a 12-year-old girl who was raped by an adult stranger she met on Snapchat have filed a lawsuit against the social media company and the attacker in Missouri state court. The lawsuit, filed Wednesday, alleges that Snap Inc. refused to disable dangerous features within its app and failed to adequately warn parents about potential harms.
According to the complaint, the girl began using Snapchat in 2021, at age 11, without her parents' knowledge. Despite the app's requirement that users be at least 13 years old, the lawsuit states that children can easily bypass this age restriction. The girl reportedly does not recall the birth date she entered to create her account.
Approximately one year after she started using the platform, the lawsuit claims, the app recommended the girl and other teen girls from nearby high schools as friends to Gabriel Joel Valentin-Rios. Valentin-Rios, an adult with no real-life connections to the minors, then began sending the girl unsolicited nude photographs. The suit asserts that Snapchat's product design made it difficult for the girl to avoid such explicit content.
Further, the lawsuit alleges that Snapchat's Snap Maps feature provided Valentin-Rios with the girl's home address without her knowledge. He then allegedly groomed her, convincing her he was a 17-year-old high school student rather than a 25-year-old man, before meeting her in person and raping her.
Valentin-Rios has pleaded guilty to statutory rape and is currently serving an 18-year prison sentence in Missouri. The lawsuit contends that Snap was aware that Valentin-Rios maintained multiple accounts, a violation of the app's policies, including one he used to lure teen girls.
Snap has stated that its teams have worked for years to implement safeguards, launch safety tutorials, collaborate with experts, and cooperate with law enforcement to prevent platform misuse. The company emphasized its commitment to the safety and well-being of its users.
The girl has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, and depression, according to the lawsuit. The plaintiffs are seeking unspecified damages and are asking the court to compel Snap to cease practices that they claim harm children.
Matthew Bergman, founder of the Social Media Victims Law Center, which brought the suit, stated, "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. 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 against Snap concerning child safety. In 2024, New Mexico sued the company, alleging that its platform's design encourages sextortion, sexual abuse, and unwanted contact between adults and minors. A judge denied Snap's motion to dismiss that case. Individual lawsuits are also pending, including one in Vermont on behalf of two 12-year-old girls who were allegedly sexually assaulted by an adult they met on Snapchat.