Parents sue Snap after Snapchat linked girl to alleged rapist

A Missouri family has sued Snap Inc. and Gabriel Joel Valentin-Rios, alleging Snapchat’s design features helped an adult stranger reach, groom and rape their daughter after she began using the app at 11. The complaint, filed June 24 in Missouri state court, says Snapchat requires users to be at least 13, but that children knew the age rule was easy to bypass.

The lawsuit says Snapchat’s Quick Add tool recommended the girl and other teen girls from nearby high schools to Valentin-Rios, who had no real-world connection to them. It also alleges that Snap Maps revealed the girl’s home address to him without her knowledge. Valentin-Rios then allegedly posed as a 17-year-old local high school boy, sent unsolicited nude photographs and continued pushing explicit content that the girl did not want.

The Social Media Victims Law Center said the plaintiff is identified as J.F. in the complaint and that the case was filed in the Circuit Court of St. Charles County, Missouri. The law center alleged that Valentin-Rios exchanged thousands of messages with J.F., her cousin and other minors, and that he used sextortion to pressure her into sending explicit photographs. It also said he created a separate account, Nocits21g, a week before the assault, and that Quick Add linked that account to more than a dozen girls ages 12 to 16.

Valentin-Rios pleaded guilty to statutory rape and is serving an 18-year prison sentence in Missouri. The lawsuit says the girl has since been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and depression. Snap did not immediately respond to a message for comment Wednesday afternoon.

The case puts a fresh spotlight on how much responsibility platforms should bear when product features make it easier for adults to find children. The complaint targets disappearing messages, location-sharing tools, Bitmoji avatars and the friend-recommendation engine as parts of a system that, it argues, can be exploited by predators. Matthew Bergman, founder of the Social Media Victims Law Center, said the assault did not happen in a vacuum and was enabled by product design.

The law center said nearly 11.5 million, or 55 percent, of U.S. teens use Snapchat, a scale that makes the company central to the national fight over child online safety. The plaintiffs are seeking unspecified damages and a court order forcing Snap to stop practices they say harm children, a demand that could test whether judges or lawmakers will compel changes to the app’s core features.