Family sues Roblox, Discord over kidnapping of 10-year-old girl

(CN) — In April, police found a missing 10-year-old girl and her pet bird with 27-year-old Matthew Naval, in a strip mall more than 250 miles from her home in Kern County, after the two reportedly met and communicated online through Roblox.

Now, her family says in a complaint filed Tuesday in San Mateo Superior Court that the online gaming platform is a “digital and real-life nightmare” for children.

The unnamed girl, represented by her father in the suit, claims that Roblox — along with online messaging platform Discord, through which she reportedly chatted with Naval after their Roblox meeting — are “recklessly and deceptively operating businesses in a way that caused the grooming and kidnapping.”

The family says the design of the Roblox’s and Discord’s apps “makes children easy prey for pedophiles” with “no appropriate safeguards to ensure that children were in fact safe or that predators were screened.”

The plaintiffs bring claims that the companies negligently designed their platforms and failed to warn about the dangers of the app, and say they should be subject to strict liability for those defects.

Launched in 2006, Roblox now claims an average of more than 85 million daily active users, and once claimed, in 2020, that more than half of all teens under the age of 16 use Roblox to play some of the millions of games, many of them created by users, or hang out in some of the countless virtual spaces hosted by the service.

According to a 2023 report published by the company, 42% of Roblox’s 68.5 million daily active users were under the age of 12, and 21% were under the age of 9. Roblox is free to play and there is no minimum age requirement to sign up. The company has touted itself as family friendly and promises on its website that it takes precautions to shield minors from sexual or violent content.

“Far from creating a safe place for children, Roblox designed, built, and maintains a toxic environment that has enabled obscene material to flourish and, worse, enables predatory pedophiles to hunt, groom, and sexually exploit children,” the plaintiffs assert in their civil complaint.

The lawsuit points to Roblox’s vast and diverse online world, claiming that it hides within its virtual nooks and crannies graphic and sexually explicit content. Last year, a report found that Roblox was hosting numerous sexually explicit games, some of which made reference to Jeffrey Epstein and Sean “Diddy” Combs, with games like “Escape to Epstein Island” and “Run from Diddy Simulator.”

“Playing video games with explicit sexual content normalizes exploitative and predatory behavior, blurring the lines of what is acceptable in real life,” the plaintiffs claim. “When such behavior is depicted as humorous, exciting, or rewarded within a game, young players can internalize the idea that harassment or sexual exploitation is harmless or even acceptable.”

After the girl was found, Naval was arrested and charged with multiple felonies, including kidnapping and committing lewd acts with a minor. Naval, who has pleaded not guilty, reportedly told police that the girl said she was much older, and that he agreed to pick her up so she could escape verbal abuse at home.

The two reportedly met on “Mic Up,” a sort of online hangout app hosted by Roblox, in March, and chatted on Discord for a few weeks. Naval reportedly told law enforcement that they had masturbated online together, he with his camera on and she with her camera off.

The plaintiffs also accuse the communications app Discord of marketing itself to young users and hosting and promoting “dangerous sexual content.” While Discord’s minimum age requirement is 13, the plaintiffs say the app does nothing to verify the users’ age, and not enough to monitor the content that minors are exposed to.

“Discord has also created a haven for predators seeking to groom, traffic, and sexually abuse minors by providing predators with endless opportunities for unmitigated interactions with children,” the plaintiffs write. “Like Roblox, Discord is overrun with harmful content and predators because the company prioritizes growth, revenue, and eventual profits over child safety.”

Tuesday’s suit is not the first Roblox and Discord have faced accusing the company of negligently allowing people to abuse children. In July, parents of an 11-year-old girl sued in San Mateo County, where Roblox is headquartered, claiming she was groomed and sexually assaulted after meeting a stranger on Roblox and talking to them on Discord.

And just last week, the parents of a 13-year-old child claimed in a complaint filed in Iowa state court that the child was “introduced to an adult predator on Roblox unbeknownst to her parents, groomed, and then kidnapped from her grandmother’s West Des Moines, Iowa home on May 24, 2025, where she was subsequently trafficked across multiple states, and repeatedly sexually abused and raped.”

While both Discord and Roblox declined to comment on pending litigation, both companies noted that in separate emails that they were committed to protecting children.

“Protecting children is a top priority, and we invest significant resources in advanced safety technology, including a combination of machine learning and human moderation teams working 24/7 to detect and address inappropriate content and behavior. This includes attempts to share personal information or direct users off platform, where safety standards and moderation may be less stringent than ours,” a Roblox spokesperson said.

“Discord is deeply committed to the safety of our users and we take decisive actions when we detect violations of our policies, including removing content, banning users, shutting down servers, and engaging with law enforcement as appropriate,” a Discord spokesman said.

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