The family of a girl who was sexually assaulted at age 12 by an adult stranger she encountered on Snapchat has taken legal action against the app’s parent company, Snap, and the man responsible for the attack, filing suit in Missouri state court.
The lawsuit, submitted Wednesday, accuses the social media giant of refusing to disable harmful features within its platform and failing to alert parents about the dangers those features may pose to children.
Court documents say the girl started using Snapchat in 2021 at age 11, without her parents knowing. Although the app requires users to be at least 13 years old to create an account, the lawsuit notes that the girl does not recall what birthday she entered, and that children were widely aware they could easily get around the age restriction.
Roughly a year into her using the app, Snapchat’s algorithm allegedly recommended the girl — along with other teenage girls from nearby high schools — as potential friends to defendant Gabriel Joel Valentin-Rios, a grown adult who had no real-world connection to any of them. The app provided no warning to the children that accepting friend requests from strangers could put them at risk.
Once the two were connected, Valentin-Rios began sending the girl unsolicited explicit photographs, according to the lawsuit. The girl “did not want these photographs and, at first, did not reciprocate but Snapchat’s product design made it impossible for (her) to avoid such explicit content,” the filing states.
The lawsuit also alleges that through Snapchat’s Snap Maps feature, the app shared the girl’s home address with Valentin-Rios without her awareness. He then proceeded to groom her, convincing her he was a 17-year-old boy from a nearby high school rather than a 25-year-old man. He eventually persuaded her to meet him in person, where he raped her.
Valentin-Rios has since pleaded guilty to statutory rape and is currently behind bars in Missouri, serving an 18-year sentence.
The lawsuit further claims that Snapchat was aware Valentin-Rios maintained multiple accounts on the platform — a violation of its own policies — including one he specifically used to target teenage girls.
Snap had not responded to a request for comment as of Wednesday afternoon.
The girl has since been diagnosed with PTSD, anxiety, and depression, according to the court filing.
The family is seeking unspecified financial damages and is asking the court to order Snap to stop engaging in practices that endanger children.
Matthew Bergman, founder of the Social Media Victims Law Center, which is representing the family, spoke about the case. “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 said. “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 lawsuit is not the first of its kind against Snap. In 2024, the state of New Mexico filed suit against the company, alleging that the platform’s design encourages sextortion, sexual abuse, and inappropriate contact between adults and minors. That lawsuit claims Snap was fully aware that “sextortion was a rampant, ‘massive,’ and ‘incredibly concerning issue’ on Snapchat” but did nothing to warn parents, young users, or the general public. A judge rejected Snap’s attempt to have that case dismissed last year.
Additional individual lawsuits are also pending against the company, including one filed in Vermont on behalf of two 12-year-old girls who were sexually assaulted by an adult they met through Snapchat.
