A DeKalb County mother is the first of many Georgia parents to sue online gaming company Roblox alleging it puts profit before safety and allows predators to target and abuse children, her attorney says.
The mother’s lawsuit, filed Monday in Gwinnett County State Court, claims Roblox is liable for the sexual exploitation, or sexploitation, of her 9-year-old son, who was groomed through the company’s online gaming platform. The boy was sent pornographic content, harassed and coerced into sending explicit images of himself to adults posing on Roblox as children, the suit says.
Matthew Dolman, an attorney representing the mother, said Roblox is about to face a flood of similar cases across the country. He said several others involving Atlanta-area families will be filed in coming weeks and he expects there to be around 150 such cases nationally within a few months.
“Roblox is the worst,” Dolman said in comparison to other interactive online platforms. “Roblox has just continued to materially misrepresent facts and state that this is a safe product, knowing full well there’s a number of law enforcement investigations, arrests and documented incidents of perpetrators not only grooming children, but actually meeting up with the children.”
Several reported incidents of children being exploited through Roblox by predators are included in the DeKalb mother’s complaint. They include the arrest in 2022 of a Clayton County man accused of luring a 13-year-old girl from Kansas to his home and raping her.
A spokesperson for Roblox said they cannot comment on pending litigation, though the company is “deeply committed” to the safety of its millions of users. They said Roblox continuously monitors and addresses inappropriate content and behavior and partners with law enforcement and other organizations to combat the sexual exploitation of children.
“Protecting children is a top priority, and we invest significant resources in advanced safety technology,” the spokesperson said. “We also provide significant resources for parents and do not allow any user-to-user image sharing or sexual conversation on our platform.”
The California-based company is accused in the DeKalb mother’s case of enticing children into a toxic environment where they are exposed to and can engage with pedophiles and pornographic content.
The Roblox platform, launched in 2006, has more than 111 million daily active users, the company says. Users can play millions of games for free and create avatars to interact with others.
In her complaint, the DeKalb mother said Roblox’s safety measures are woefully inadequate. For example, the company does not check whether users accurately report their age when signing up, she alleged.
“Had (Roblox) disclosed the truth of what was really occurring on its app, (the boy’s) mother would never have permitted (him) to use this app without her strict supervision,” the complaint says. “Tragically, what happened to him is far from an isolated event.”
A criminal investigation into the DeKalb child’s exploitation is underway, Dolman said. He said the predators threatened to send explicit images of the boy to his classmates and others.
Roblox is on the “Dirty Dozen” list created by the National Center on Sexual Exploitation to shame mainstream entities that facilitate, enable and profit from sexual abuse and exploitation. Others on the list include Apple, Cash App and LinkedIn.
Dolman said many of the cases against Roblox will likely be consolidated before a single federal judge to streamline the litigation process.
In Georgia, Roblox has also fought allegations it designed its platform to be addictive to children. One such case was voluntarily dismissed by the mother of a 12-year-old in Cobb County.
In May, a federal judge in Atlanta denied Roblox’s request to dismiss a case by the mother of a Rockdale County teenager who spent around 10 hours a day playing video games.
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