Lawsuit Alleges 9-Year-Old Girl Traumatized on Roblox, After Being Targeted by Sexual Predator

Roblox sexual predator who befriended the young child accused her of being a “bad girlfriend” when she refused to send him explicit photos of herself.

A mother claims that Roblox’s failure to implement adequate safety measures resulted in her young daughter being psychologically scarred by an adult, who was using Roblox to target and sexually exploit minors.

The complaint (PDF) was filed by a mother identified only as Jane Doe Y.H., on behalf of her daughter, Jane Doe E.R., in California Superior Court on February 20, naming Roblox Corporation as the defendant. The plaintiffs are using aliases to remain anonymous.

Roblox is an online gaming platform launched in 2006 that allows users to create their own games and servers and invite other players to experience them. It allows interactions between players and communication through chat features.

Heavily marketed toward children, Roblox attracts millions of players worldwide every day. However, the game manufacturer has been named in hundreds of Roblox child sexual exploitation lawsuits filed by parents and young adult survivors, who allege the platform’s inadequate safety features allowed predators to pose as peers and groom users into sending explicit photos and videos. In some cases, these individuals have convinced children to meet them, resulting in sexual assault, rape, kidnapping and human trafficking.

Amid mounting pressure, Roblox began rolling out facial recognition software late last year, saying the technology can verify users’ ages and restrict adults from contacting children without parental consent. However, families argue the safeguards came far too late to protect many victims.

According to the lawsuit, E.R. was just 9 years old when she started playing on Roblox. Her mother indicates she was led to believe that Roblox was safe for children due to its marketing claims.

Soon after E.R. began using Roblox, she was targeted by an adult who falsely claimed to be a child her age. He groomed E.R. through the Roblox chat, earning her trust and sending explicit images and messages, convincing the child they were in a relationship.

When she resisted sending him nude images, the adult predator told the 9-year-old child she was being a “bad girlfriend.”

Her mother says the interactions led E.R. to suffer life-changing psychological and emotional harm, humiliation, shame and constant fear. The lawsuit says Roblox should have had mechanisms in place to prevent these kinds of interactions as soon as it launched, instead of 20 years after-the-fact.

“Had Defendant implemented even the most basic system of screening or age and identity verification, as well as effective parental controls, Plaintiff never would have interacted with these predators and never would have suffered the harm that she did. Plaintiff’s life has been devastated as a direct result of Defendant’s conduct.”

– Jane Doe Y.H. et al v. Roblox Corporation

The mother presents claims of fraudulent concealment and misrepresentations, negligent misrepresentation, negligence, negligence-failure to warn, negligence-unreasonable design, negligent undertaking, design defect and failure to warn.

Roblox Child Sex Exploitation Lawsuits

While this case has been filed in California state court, the majority of similar claims have been brought by families in the federal court system, where a Roblox child sex exploitation lawsuit multidistrict litigation (MDL) has been established before U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg, who is overseeing coordinated discovery and pretrial proceedings out of the Northern District of California.

As the size and scope of the litigation continues to grow, it is expected that Judge Seeborg will move toward selecting a small group of representative cases to prepare for a bellwether process, allowing the parties to conduct case specific discovery and schedule a handful of claims for early trial dates. These “bellwether” trials are typically used to gauge how juries may respond to certain evidence and testimony likely to be repeated throughout the claims.

However, if the trials conclude without the parties reaching a Roblox lawsuit settlement agreement or other resolution, Judge Seeborg may be forced to later remand each individual claim back to the U.S. District Court where it originated for separate trials in the future, which will likely take many years.

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