A young woman is suing Roblox, Discord and Uber after a repeat predator used the platforms to groom her when she was 15 — paying a driver to bring her from Indiana to his New Jersey home, where he kept her locked in a small, dank room and repeatedly raped her, according to the suit.
The anonymous plaintiff, now 19, is accusing the video game platform Roblox and Discord, an online messaging platform, of ignoring warnings about her abductor’s history of illicit behavior and failing to effectively block him from the apps.
She is also alleging that Uber has failed to train its drivers on the risks of coordinating off-platform rides for minors, according to the suit, which was filed Friday in US District Court for the Northern District of California.
A Roblox spokesperson disputed the claims and said that upon learning the perpetrator’s identity, it closed his accounts and reported him to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
“Our policies firmly prohibit any form of child exploitation and we have a multilayered safety system to help protect users,” the rep said. “We do not allow user-to-user image or video sharing, limit chat for younger users, and deploy 24/7 moderation and robust user reporting tools. While no system is perfect, we continue to evolve and strengthen our protections every day.”
Uber did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
Discord declined to comment on ongoing litigation, but said it is “deeply committed to user safety, and we want our platform to be the best place for friends to connect before, during and after playing games.”
The company said it requires all users to be at least 13 years old to use their platform, offers parental controls and employs advanced technology to remove violative content and prevent the spread of sexual exploitation.
Months before the teen girl was kidnapped and raped, Roblox and Discord users sounded alarm bells about a user named “DoctorRofatnik,” posting dozens of screenshots of him sending sexual messages to minors, according to the lawsuit.
In one message, “DoctorRofatnik” — the creator of a popular Roblox game — told a 12-year-old girl, “You’re the reason why I’m gonna end up behind bars,” and “You’re 12…soon I’ll corrupt you beyond your wildest dreams,” the suit said.
In January 2022, the Guardian published a detailed expose on “DoctorRofatnik” and his predatory behavior, including sending sexual messages to multiple underage girls.
Yet Roblox and Discord failed to conduct adequate investigations into the user, allowing him to skirt platform bans by remaking his accounts and transferring ownership of his video game to other users so he was still paid by Roblox, according to the suit.
In January 2022, the teen plaintiff reached out to “DoctorRofatnik” — a then-23-year-old New Jersey man named Arnold Castillo — as a fan of his video game on Roblox, according to the lawsuit.
Castillo invited her to join his Discord messaging channel, where they soon exchanged phone numbers and started texting and speaking on the phone for hours at a time, per the suit.
Much of that time was spent with Castillo attempting to convince the young girl that the grooming allegations against him were false — and the plaintiff found his denial convincing, especially since he pointed out he was still able to use both Roblox and Discord, the suit said.
Castillo commissioned the teen to make artwork for his video game, and soon started sending her gifts, including McDonald’s deliveries to her Indiana home via DoorDash, artist tools and a tablet computer, altogether worth thousands of dollars, according to the lawsuit.
Over the following months, Castillo sent the young girl sexual messages that discussed showering with her; saying he wanted to “make love” to her and “have kids”; discussed “fingering” her and oral sex; and talked about her “hymen,” the suit said.
In April 2022, Castillo said, “Now I just need to make you a woman in the bedroom,” according to the suit. When the girl expressed concerns that she might be too young for sex, Castillo said, “[Y]ou’re not,” adding that he would “deflower” her, the suit said.
Between April and May 2022, Castillo used the Uber app to contact a driver about arranging an off-platform ride — agreeing to pay him $1,000 via CashApp to drive the young girl from her home in Indiana to his New Jersey residence, a roughly 10-hour drive, according to the suit.
Upon her arrival, Castillo confined the girl to a “tiny, dank room” in a building next to his residence, with only a dirty twin mattress lying on the floor, where he controlled her movements and her access to food and water, the suit said.
He raped the teen girl multiple times and used Uber to have others attempt to purchase the “Plan B” pill to prevent her from becoming pregnant, along with hair dye in an effort to disguise the missing girl, whose family was frantically searching for her, per the suit.
Law enforcement eventually found the girl after they linked a new log-in to her Instagram account to Castillo’s address, where they found Castillo with three condoms on him and immediately arrested him, according to the lawsuit.
He is serving a 15-year sentence in federal prison, after he pleaded guilty in 2023 to transportation of a minor with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity and coercion and enticement of a minor.
“A dangerous predator was able to groom, traffic, and repeatedly rape our young client because these Big Tech companies refused to take the simple steps necessary to operate safely,” Alexandra Walsh, an attorney at Anapol Weiss helping lead nine federal lawsuits against Roblox, told The Post in a statement.
“This lawsuit aims to hold these companies accountable for what happened to this young girl, and hopefully to prevent other children from suffering such horrible abuses,” she added.
The lawsuit alleged the plaintiff has suffered “unimaginable harm,” including emotional distress, psychological trauma and mental anguish — adding that “[h]er innocence has been snatched from her forever.”
It’s just the latest lawsuit accusing Roblox of allowing child sexual exploitation to run rampant on its platform.
Last September, the mother of a 15-year-old boy who killed himself filed the first wrongful death suit against Roblox and Discord, alleging the apps’ lack of guardrails allowed her son to be sexually coerced by an adult predator into sending explicit photos.
Roblox’s video game site is extremely popular among young users, with millions of kids using the platform to play games and message their friends.
In 2024, it reported an average of 82.9 million daily active users — with roughly 56% of them between the ages of 5 and 16.
The video game site has rolled out age-based kid and teen accounts with parental controls and other protections in an attempt to clamp down on illicit activity, including sexual messages between adults and kids.
Critics have raised concerns that children and adults can easily lie about their age when making an account.
The lawsuit alleged many predators on Roblox do not even bother hiding that they are using the platform to hunt children, with usernames like “@Igruum_minors” and “@RavpeTinyK1dsJE.”
