Snap sued over rape of minor who met adult attacker via Snapchat

A tragic incident involving a 12-year-old girl who was raped by an adult stranger she connected with on Snapchat has led to a lawsuit against the social media company Snap and the attacker in Missouri state court. The lawsuit, filed on Wednesday, alleges that Snap has failed to disable dangerous features on its app or adequately warn parents about potential risks.

The girl, referred to as J.F., began using Snapchat in 2021 at the age of 11 without her parents’ knowledge. Despite the app’s minimum age requirement of 13, the lawsuit claims that children can easily bypass this restriction. A year after joining Snapchat, the app recommended J.F. and other teen girls from nearby high schools as friends to the adult defendant, Gabriel Joel Valentin-Rios, who had no real-life connections to them. The app did not alert the children to the potential dangers of connecting with strangers.

After connecting with Valentin-Rios, he began sending J.F. unsolicited explicit photos, which she did not want. The lawsuit states that Snapchat’s product design made it difficult for J.F. to avoid such content. Additionally, the app’s Snap Maps feature provided Valentin-Rios with J.F.’s home address without her knowledge, allowing him to groom her by posing as a local high school boy. This ultimately led to him meeting her in person and committing the assault.

Valentin-Rios, who pleaded guilty to statutory rape, is currently serving an 18-year prison sentence in Missouri. The lawsuit alleges that Snapchat was aware of his multiple accounts, which violated the app’s policies and were used to target teenage girls.

J.F. has been diagnosed with PTSD, anxiety, and depression as a result of the assault. The plaintiffs are seeking unspecified damages and asking the court to compel Snap to implement measures that protect children using their platform.

Matthew Bergman, founder of the Social Media Victims Law Center, 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.” He criticized Snap for failing to address the safety concerns of its platform.

This lawsuit is not the first of its kind against Snap. New Mexico filed a lawsuit in 2024, alleging that the app’s design features facilitate sextortion, sexual abuse, and unwanted contact between adults and minors. Despite being aware of these issues, Snap reportedly did not warn users about the risks.

There are also individual lawsuits pending against the company, including one in Vermont involving two 12-year-old girls who were sexually assaulted by an adult they met on Snapchat. These cases highlight the need for social media companies to prioritize the safety of their users, especially minors.