Sexploitation lawsuit filed against Roblox in case involving Clay County teen

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (KCTV) - A child sexploitation lawsuit has been filed against Roblox Corporation in Clay County in a case involving a 15-year-old boy.

National litigation firms Dolman Law Group and Wallace Miller filed the suit on behalf of a Missouri woman and her son. The complaint claims the San Mateo, California, headquartered corporation is accountable for “creating a breeding ground for predators and enabling sexual exploitation of a 15-year-old boy.”

It claims a 15-year-old boy in Clay County, identified as John Doe, was an avid user of Roblox and said the boy’s mother allowed him to use the online gaming platform under the belief it had proper safeguards in place.

According to the lawsuit, a dangerous male predator pretending to be a young girl began grooming Doe and encouraging secretive behavior.

“After capturing his trust cultivated on Roblox, the predator transitioned to text message, wherein the predator sent (Doe) graphic messages, sent him sexually explicit images of young girls, and ultimately convinced (him) to send him sexually explicit images of himself,” the lawsuit claims.

“It seems safe, it’s a child’s product, so parents let their kids get on these games,” said Stan Gipe, a partner at the Dolman Law Group working on this lawsuit. “There’s no warning to the parents about what can happen, and unbeknownst to these children, there’s a world of sexual predators that inhabits this playscape for kids.”

Gipe says the firm created an account to see if it could discover any potential safety issues itself.

“Within three minutes of me opening an account, I was a 12-year-old girl interacting with other young people who thought I was a 12-year-old girl,” said Gipe. “It was so easy to see how quickly this could become inappropriate. If you know there are dangers out there on the product, make people aware. Just give a warning. Hey, we try to do everything we can, but just to make you aware and be careful, this can happen.”

Matthew Dolman, the Principal of Dolman Law Group, said Roblox has been operating anarchically for nearly 20 years.

“They are just now proudly publicizing their safety improvements, but why has it taken them this long to act and institute such simple measures?” Dolman asked. “Roblox cares more about shareholders and their valuation than our children, who are exposed to depraved individuals on their platform every second of the day.”

Last week, a lawsuit was filed in St. Louis against Roblox, claiming a 13-year-old girl was exploited by a pedophile online.

The latest lawsuit claims Roblox is aware of the experiences of these children and does nothing to stop them.

You can read the entire lawsuit here.

A Roblox spokesperson provided the following statement to KCTV 5:

Roblox provided KCTV5 with a list of safety measures, such as not being able to share personal information or links on the website, no user-to-user image sharing allowed, no sexual conversations, parental controls, and newly added age estimation technology. The company also added a developed AI early detection system to help find and report potential critical harms.

Roblox also provided additional background on safety efforts on its site:

• We work extremely hard to prevent bad incidents from happening, but we also should not lose sight of the positive experience tens of millions have on Roblox every single day.
• We are constantly innovating and launching new safety features, including the most recent release of our latest open-source model, Sentinel, an advanced AI-powered system designed to help detect child endangerment interactions early for faster intervention.
• As part of our open-source safety toolkit, Sentinel expands the arsenal of tools we have to detect and act on these potentially serious violations. In the first half of 2025, Sentinel helped Roblox’s team submit approximately 1,200 reports to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Read more in this blog post.
• We have a range of safety features to guard against predatory behavior.
• Our Community Standards set clear expectations for how to behave on Roblox and define restricted experiences. They require that everyone treat each other with civility and respect and help keep everyone safe by prohibiting content and behavior that may be inappropriate or harmful. Our standards are more stringent than most, if not all, platforms.
  • Our Trust and Safety team uses these Standards to moderate content and respond to abuse reports from users.
  • These standards specifically ban users from engaging in sexual conversation with or soliciting sexual material from minors.
  • If any users are found to be violating these standards, they may be suspended or removed from the platform. Roblox also works proactively with authorities to report cases of violent threats, child endangerment, or other serious real-world harm, and we partner with NCMEC.
  • We have a large, expertly trained team with thousands of members dedicated to protecting our users and monitoring 24/7 for inappropriate content. Our Trust & Safety team takes swift action (typically within minutes) to address any content or behavior that violates our Terms of Use or Community Standards.
  • Violative material and accounts are removed through AI scans, user flags, and proactive monitoring, with a dedicated team focused on enforcement and swift removal.
• Very significantly, users under 13 can not directly message others on Roblox, outside of games or experiences. They are also unable to directly message others during games or experiences unless the default setting is changed using Parental Controls.
• We strongly believe the industry needs to work together to move the needle on safety, which is why we actively collaborate across industries to provide others with better tools for detecting grooming chat.

Gipe says his firm represents dozens of kids in lawsuits similar to the one filed in Clay County. He’s been working with families across the country for months. He states that Roblox only started making safety changes once lawsuits were filed.

“The more reports that come in, the more notice they get, the harder it is to sweep this stuff under the rug,” said Gipe. “Because it’s publicity and lawsuits that will create change.”

The suit filed in Clay County is requesting a jury trial.