Protecting Children from Roblox Predators

Roblox isn’t just a game, it’s a massive social world where kids can meet strangers, build friendships, and chat in real time. That sounds normal for online play, until you understand how quickly “friendly” interactions can turn into grooming. In this episode, we sit down with Susan Jones Knape, founder of A Case for Women, to unpack how predators allegedly use Roblox to target children and why the platform’s kid safe marketing can leave families with a false sense of security. 

We walk through the grooming pattern step by step: how trust is built through gameplay, how offenders pretend to be a peer, and how many children are pushed to move conversations off Roblox to apps like Discord or Snapchat where monitoring is harder. Susan shares what families report after the fact, from disturbing sexual conversations and image sharing to cases that escalate into in person meetings, assault, and trafficking. We also talk about scale and moderation, repeat offenders, and the emerging multidistrict litigation that aims to force change. 

Most importantly, we focus on practical protection for parents and caregivers. You’ll hear clear warning signs to watch for, how to set safer household boundaries like keeping gaming out of bedrooms, and what to do if you suspect exploitation. Susan explains why reporting to federal resources matters, including the FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. 

Transcript

Roblox’s Hidden Risk For Kids

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Roblox is a widely used online gaming platform popular with people of all ages, but most especially children. It is also a playground for predators who exploit digital environments to target children, sometimes with deadly consequences. Today, our guest Susan Canapi, founder of A Case for Women, provides valuable insight into how predators use digital spaces to harm children and what parents and caregivers can do to protect them. I'm Maria McMullen, and this is Genesis, the podcast. Susan, welcome to the show. Thank you. It's good to see you again. We're here to talk about yet another case that you've been working on with your team at a case for women that is both disturbing and probably pretty groundbreaking as well. So we're going to talk about the gaming platform Roblox and in particular how predators use that platform to target children, to hunt down children, to just exploit them in many horrible ways. So for listeners who might not be familiar, can you briefly explain what Roblox is and why it appeals to children in particular?

SPEAKER_00 1:09

Roblox is a massive online platform. I think most parents know about it because there are so many kids on Roblox right now. There are about 150 million daily active users on Roblox. And the important thing to know about Roblox is that this is a game that is marketed as safe and very appropriate for children age five and up. So what we have found is that most parents have assumed that because it's marketed and the packaging says this is great for ages five and up, that it is a safe game for their kids to be playing. And the fact is that it isn't.

How Roblox Works Like Social Media

SPEAKER_01 1:56

Yeah, and that has been playing out for sure in some recent headlines related to Roblox, and we're going to get into that. How does the platform work in terms of social interaction and online play?

SPEAKER_00 2:09

Roblox really functions as a social media platform, which a lot of parents don't understand, but in playing the games, kids are connected with people from all over the world, perhaps. And it's a way to have social interactions that really exploded when kids were all locked at home during COVID. That's when Roblox exploded. So it's not only a game where you're focused on that particular game, but it's a way to make friends and to connect with people literally all over the world. And that's what makes it so powerful and attractive.

SPEAKER_01 2:50

There are lots of platforms that in my mind sound similar to Roblox. Why is this one in particular so challenging?

SPEAKER_00 3:01

Well, for two reasons. One, it is marketed specifically as safe for young kids. So that is what makes it different. Two, it is just such a big platform. It grew so much during COVID times to the point that it now has 150 million daily active users. And frankly, what has happened is that the powers that be at Roblox just can't keep up with the moderation. They do not have enough moderators to watch the content and to make sure that things are not being said or shared that shouldn't be. Just to give you an example, look at a platform like YouTube. YouTube has problems too. Every online platform has problems. But YouTube is staffed with a lot of moderators that at least attempt to keep down the predators and the sharing of inappropriate materials and all of that sort of thing. Roblox is just the Wild West. And what we have seen from the parents that have come to us and from working with the lawyers in this particular litigation is that they are just not even beginning to touch the surface in terms of what needs to be done to moderate and to keep bad players off of this game.

Grooming Starts Small Then Escalates

SPEAKER_01 4:27

How does that even happen? I mean, how is this not better regulated?

SPEAKER_00 4:33

Here's what happens on Roblox. Nobody is going to approach another player, let's say, is not going to approach your child and say, Hey, I'm a predator and I'm going to eventually ask for naked pictures and then meet up with you. Of course, that's not going to happen like that. But it is going to happen just in a more subtle way. And that's what makes this so dangerous. Here's what typically happens kids are in the next room, you think they're safe, they're playing games on roadblocks, and there's all kinds of games. There's Grow a Garden, there's just a million games, right? That you can choose to play, and they all sound very innocent. So your child is playing this game. You think it's fine, you check in, you've set up parental controls, you're a great mother or father. Your child then meets friends through this game. And let's say they meet someone who then begins communicating with them and is pretending to be another kid their age. Maybe even pretending to be someone in their community. And your child thinks, oh, that's fun, I've made a friend, right? I've made an online friend, that's great. And they love playing, and they think I'm a good player and I'm smart and I'm doing cool things and all of that. So there begins to be this very subtle grooming of the kid to enable trust and to make them feel like it's a safe place to be. And then the next thing that generally happens is that predator who is posing as a young person but is generally a middle-aged man, oftentimes in a different country or in a different state, says, Well, hey, come on over to Discord or come on over to Snapchat. So we can communicate more freely there. And that's when things generally take a turn for the worst. There's many other ways that kids can communicate with or the predators can reach these kids on roadblocks, but the most common way is to meet them, to befriend them, to make them feel safe, to have that connection, and then get them over to Discord.

SPEAKER_01 7:04

I'm afraid to ask this question, and then what happens?

SPEAKER_00 7:07

Well, okay. Then what happens, and and yes, it's a scary thing. These predators are very skilled, they're very sophisticated. This isn't, these aren't people who are just doing one-off things. These are serial predators from what we've seen. So they're sophisticated, they know how to groom children. Their goal, just to put it bluntly, is to obtain pornographic pictures of children. Blows my mind.

SPEAKER_01 7:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:39

I mean, it just I can't even hardly say the words, right? But that is their goal, is to get those materials. Why does anyone want their materials? I mean, that that just blows my mind right there. But that's their goal because there is a market for it. And they are going to continue to groom that child by appealing to whatever their vulnerability is. Do they not think they're pretty? The predator will say, Oh, well, you're really beautiful. I'm sure your body is beautiful too. I'd like to see more of it. Are we have seen a lot of abuse of kids who are on the spectrum who don't understand social cues? And so the predator might say things that would seem inappropriate to someone who understood a little more. But these kids just do whatever they're told, and they think it's totally normal. Oh, I'll take off my underwear and show what it looks like under my underwear. There, there's all kinds of weird things that are going on. It's really kind of hard to talk about it. But the goal of these predators is mostly to get the photos sent to them so they can do whatever they want with the photos. And in the worst cases, which is about 20% of what we see at a case for women, the goal is actually to meet up and to sexually assault or traffic that child. So this is extremely scary. I should add, Maria, that any kind of sharing online child pornography is a felony. The Child Sexual Abuse Materials Act, CSAM, it's a felony, but it's happening all the time. And we see FBI and Homeland Security involvement in many of our cases.

SPEAKER_01 9:45

So at what point did you and a case for women become involved in exploring these dangers of Roblox and what motivated that?

SPEAKER_00 9:57

We were approached back in 2024 by a law firm that had heard about potential issues, sexual predation on Roblox. You know, it's just like what happened with Rideshare. They came to me at a conference and said, we think there might be something going on here. And to be honest, my kids are no longer kids, they're grown adults. I'm not familiar with Roblox, so I thought, oh, video game, how could you even, how could this even happen over a video game? I was very naive. So we put out some messaging, just a little bit of messaging, for about 24 hours, and we were flooded with inquiries from parents who had horror stories, and again, it was completely eye-opening to me. The parents came to us and said, My child is suicidal because of what they experienced. They've been treated at an inpatient psychiatric hospital because they are so distraught by the trauma. They are cutting themselves. In some cases, they have run off to meet who they thought was a cute boy who lived down the street. It turned out to be an older guy who got them into a car and then sexually assaulted them. So there was such a horrible range of traumatic injuries that we just knew we had to get involved and help parents. So that was mid-2024. Since then, we have fielded about 10,000 inquiries just about Roblox assault, and we have helped about 2,000 parents actually join the litigation against Roblox to stop this.

SPEAKER_01 11:57

Let's talk about that litigation. What's going on there?

SPEAKER_00 12:00

Well, it's very new. So there are only a half a few dozen cases that have been filed now. And an MDL multi-district litigation has been formed. So that is a way to consolidate the many cases that will eventually come into one place so that the cases are handled more efficiently. But it's it's all new. There are cases that have been filed, but we don't have any settlements or verdicts at this point. What I can tell you is that all of the law firms are feeling very confident about the case because there is no lack of proof of the harm that has been done. The FBI, Homeland Security, the National Center for Exploited Children, they have been all over this, but it's still been kind of under the radar until the plaintiff's lawyers got involved about a year and a half, year and nine months ago.

Warning Signs And Law Enforcement Reality

SPEAKER_01 13:04

Yeah, I think I if I think back, that's around the time maybe I started hearing this. I do have kids who still game. They're not five years old, but that doesn't make the danger any less for really any one of us. And one of the things that comes to mind to me about age is no one verifies those dates of birth when you put them into whether it's Roblox or a social media account. You pretty much, it's a an honor system that has no honor of entering the birth date that you want to use. And even your identity is you can make up whatever you want. And I do think on some platforms, though, there are efforts made to reduce the number of kind of these bot accounts or accounts that are not actually real people or duplicates of certain individuals. But I don't know enough about how Roblox works to say if they do any of those types. You're smiling, I'm guessing it's no, they don't have any real oversight on those things.

SPEAKER_00 14:10

Well, unfortunately, what we've seen, and there have been news articles about this too, are repeat offenders on Roblox. So there have been predators who've been called out for, you know, this sexual assault, and they change their name and get another account. So the lack of oversight is stunning. The real, the real just heartbreak here is that we aren't talking about just any game that where kids can lie about their age, right? That's a problem overall, or that's just a problem on the internet. In general, you can lie about your age, right? But specifically with Roblox, it is being sold to parents as safe. And that is really what the core problem is. We talk to uh dozens of parents every day who say I had parental controls on. I thought my child in my house in the bedroom next to mine with the parental controls playing a game was safe. And it turned out it wasn't. So there is enormous parental guilt about what happened. And one of the things I want to express here is to parents, it's not your fault. You can be the best parent in the world, the most watchful parent in the world with all these parental controls on, but the predators know how to get around the controls. That's the bottom line. So you have to do, you have to do more than that. And I do have some tips when you want those.

SPEAKER_01 15:49

Oh, yes, we are definitely going to take those tips. I find it hard to understand how any product could be marketed as safe for children, proven not so, and there is no investigation into that. How can that be?

SPEAKER_00 16:09

Well, that blows my mind too. And that's what we're trying to blow wide open right now. Um, certainly the lawsuit against Roblox is a civil litigation, as you know. And that is causing some of the media to look at these cases and to write about them. There have been some write-ups in USA Today and People magazine about kids that have been trafficked. So the real incredibly visible, egregious cases are getting some national attention now. But what I do worry about, Maria, and those are horrible, and they are just unbelievable. But what I worry about is that parents might read that and think, well, there's no way my child's gonna leave my house and get in the car with somebody and get trafficked to Florida because I'm not gonna let them leave the house. And what parents don't realize is that your child in the bedroom next door to you could be taking naked pictures of themselves or they could be receiving naked pictures or videos and be in very disturbing sexual conversations that they probably don't even understand. So that we have seen has a very traumatic effect on children. I mean, I don't have to tell you that, obviously. It's like sexual assault. So you don't have to be trafficked in some high-profile way to be sexually assaulted. You could be sexually assaulted and still be in your home with your parents in the next room. And that's what breaks our heart. Now, how do parents even realize this is going on when they come to us? They didn't realize until something bad happened. Usually their child becomes very withdrawn, emotional. A lot of times we see these kids cutting themselves as a way to relieve the stress, a horrific number of suicide attempts, a lot of secrecy. So any kind of abnormal behavior to a parent should clue them in that something is going on. But another thing we have seen, and again, all of this just blows my mind and it is so concerning. We have seen parents who, you know, are thought they had the ideal family situation and and that everything was going great, and literally had Homeland Security knock on their door, or had the FBI knock on their door. And that is because thankfully, these big law enforcement agencies are actively trying to do something. The problem is just too big. But what they are doing is they're tracing the IP addresses of the predators that are sending around this pornographic material of children, and they're tracing it to then where is this originating from? So we have seen so many mothers just be stunned when you know Homeland Security shows up and says we need to see all the computers in the house, and then they find out that these images have been taken and shared, and they're just astounded. And again, I this is not parent blaming in any way. This is Roblox blaming. It's Roblox and Discord are at fault here.

SPEAKER_01 19:54

I guess pulling the plug on Roblox is not a possibility. Is that right?

SPEAKER_00 20:00

We'd love for Roblox to go off the market, but the fact is there is such an appetite for games, and frankly, a lot of parents need things for their kids to do. So I don't think it's ever gonna go away. Or if it goes away, it's gonna be replaced by somebody else, right?

SPEAKER_01 20:22

Yeah, I mean that's it, that's an excellent point because it one will go and then there'll always be a new one. Years ago, I know as much as maybe six, seven years ago, Fortnite was the biggest game, interactive game that kids were playing, and it wasn't possible to tear them away from it, and there were they were playing with people whom they were not familiar with or and and some who they were. But there will be other platforms if Roblox is is gone. No doubt about that. And as if all of this was not bad enough. I read something on your blog that I wanted to ask you about. So on your blog on a caseforwomen.com, there is a statement or an article that says Roblox even uses games called Diddy Party, Survive Diddy, Jeff Epstein's Supporter, and Escape to Epstein Island. Are those marketed to children over the age of five? And what is this about?

SPEAKER_00 21:27

Yes, those are all actual games within the Roblox platform. Enough said.

SPEAKER_01 21:36

I don't know what to make of that. I don't understand it. I've never looked at any of those games. I don't I could only surmise what they are about, but how could anyone believe that with those titles they might be appropriate for anyone at all, let alone someone who is a minor?

SPEAKER_00 21:55

I think that's just a testament to the lack of moderation. There's so many. Games, there are so many participants, it's just a massive platform with extremely little oversight, period.

Practical Safety Steps For Caregivers

SPEAKER_01 22:08

So, given everything that we have reviewed, we know that this is a dangerous platform for probably just about all of us, but most especially for children. What practical steps can parents and caregivers take to monitor Roblox activity and help keep their kids safe while still allowing them to enjoy the platform?

SPEAKER_00 22:30

That's a great question because the reality is in our world today, you know, kids are going to want to be on Roblox. Their friends are on, they're going to want to be on. I think it's unrealistic to say just never go on Roblox.

SPEAKER_01 22:43

Right, right.

SPEAKER_00 22:44

But what parents need to understand is that they are responsible for the safety of their children because Roblox isn't taking that seriously. And the parental controls are not enough. So just because you set up the parental controls does not mean that you can look away. Now, there are a couple of, or actually more than a couple, of things that we would advise. And one of them is really kind of easy, and that is to just not allow game playing in the child's bedroom. Make game playing something that has to be done in the family areas of the house so that you can be around and have a little bit more eyes on what is actually going on, and if your child is seeming nervous or anxious or there's just something that doesn't feel right. So we suggest that you never allow your child to have you know their device in the bedroom, playing it, particularly at night. That's just a recipe for disaster right there. Second of all, having really honest conversations with your kid and age-appropriate conversations about what is okay and what's not okay. If someone asks you for a picture of X, that is not okay. You stop, you come and tell me. A lot of kids are so young that they don't know what's okay. And the way the predators ask, they make it seem like it's fun. Let's play a game. You show me your belly button, and I'll show you mine. That's kind of the way it starts, and then it goes to a very dark place, and the kids don't even understand it's going there. So I think parents have to have the conversations about what is good and what is bad, okay? The other thing is it is important for parents to check periodically what images are being shared, what chats their kids are in, what games are being played. So you just can't let it go on and not check. You don't have to watch every second. But having that child with you in your den while you're doing the dishes or studying or whatever you're doing, you can pick up on vibes, you can look over their shoulders, and that can make the difference in them being a target or not. I will tell you this too, Maria. These predators are very, very sophisticated. So they not only know how to talk to kids, they also know how to spot a vulnerable child. They particularly spot kids who are on the spectrum. They spot kids who might be feeling lonely, disenfranchised, just kind of bullied at school and needing a friend. They spot any kind of weakness because their only goal is to sexually abuse a child. That's it. They don't care. They don't care who that child is, but that's their goal. So they're looking for kids that don't have parents around, that that are looking for some kind of affirmation because they're feeling a lack of self-confidence, and they know how to manipulate kids into feeling safe enough to then share this pornographic material.

SPEAKER_01 26:24

Do we have any idea of the scope of this problem? Say how many incidents have been reported or how many predators have been identified.

SPEAKER_00 26:34

You know, at this point, it it's too early for really me to give an answer in that. I can tell you, as I said, just in the past year and a half, we've talked to 10,000 and helped 2,000 families. That's an astounding number to be able to do that.

SPEAKER_01 26:50

Just for yeah, just for just one place.

SPEAKER_00 26:54

We're not the only group out there talking about this. And I, this is off the cuff, but I would say several hundred of those ended up in in-person sexual assault, which is something else I'd like to talk about. Can we go there for a minute?

SPEAKER_01 27:10

Yeah, go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 27:12

I think a lot of parents watching might wonder how do you go from playing a game to in-person sexual assault? That just seems impossible. But it is possible. And that's because these predators, again, are very, very skilled. And they are not saying, I'm a predator. They are pretending to be, you know, a cute, a cute teenage boy who has the same interest that you have, likes the same music that you like, or poetry, or whatever it is that you might be into. So they are they're really building those relationships, which is all a part of their grooming. And frequently then they will hatch a plan. They will say, Oh, tell me about your parents' work schedule. Oh, your mom doesn't get, you know, she works a night shift at a hospital. Okay, then you know what? It would be so fun to meet you at XYZ tonight. So it's very exciting, and the kids think, Oh, I've got a friend, I've got a cute boy who likes me, and I'm gonna go sneak out. Something that innocently would have happened decades ago. Kids would sneak out the window and go see a cute boy and have a kiss in a backseat of a car. Well, this is the same framing, but with a really horrendous outcome. So the kids will often go. Some of these predators will have a setup of a child to meet the person, and then the predator will expose themselves and assault the kid, or worse shit, shove them in a truck and traffic them.

Where To Report And Get Help

SPEAKER_01 29:00

Yeah, that is really terrifying, and I'm really glad we brought this information to our listeners so that they can take some precautions and also learn more about using Roblox and just this the whole investigation. Hopefully, that will come out of these findings. Can you tell us where people can learn more about the situation?

SPEAKER_00 29:25

Well, certainly on our website at a caseforwomen.com, we have a whole section on Roblox, but I will tell you if there is something where you are have an immediate in-danger kind of concern. The FBI has an Internet Crime Complaint Center, and that would be a place to go immediately. They will jump on this. And then the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children is another resource, and then finally there is a National Child Abuse Hotline. So all of these take the distribution of sexually inappropriate photos of children extremely seriously. And again, that's why the FBI and Homeland Security have been so involved in these cases. And I will tell you this: you need to go to one of these federal agencies. Local police don't know what to do. We hear from parents all the time who have gone to their local police departments, and they're, you know, God help them, they are trying, but they don't know what to do in this situation. It's not a normal local police kind of situation, and they don't have the tools to track IP addresses across states and all of that. So this is a matter of going to the big guns federally.

SPEAKER_01 30:51

Yeah, that's very good advice. Susan, thank you for bringing this to our attention and for talking with me today.

SPEAKER_00 30:59

Thank you for having me, and I hope all the parents are feeling empowered with this information.

SPEAKER_01 31:07

Genesis Women's Shelter and Support exists to give women in abusive situations a way out. We are committed to our mission of providing safety, shelter, and support for women and children who have experienced domestic violence and to raise awareness regarding its cause, prevalence, and impact. Join us in creating a societal shift on how people think about domestic violence. You can learn more at GenesisShelter.org and when you follow us on social media on Facebook and Instagram at Genesis Women's Shelter, and on X at Genesis Shelter. The Genesis Helpline is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, by call or text at 214 946 HELP. 214 946 4357.