Predators Have Used Roblox to Groom Children for Sexual Abuse

From the Editor’s Desk

April 3, 2026

The Roblox gaming platform, widely used by children under 13 and estimated to have tens of millions of users in India, has come under increasing legal and regulatory scrutiny following documented cases in which its social features have been used by predators to groom children for sexual abuse. Children and parents in India, one of Roblox’s fastest growing markets, need to take note and act to protect themselves.

Industry assessments place the number of Roblox users in India between 30 and 50 million, though the company has not published an official country-wise breakdown. Global data shows that more than half of Roblox users are under 16, with a large share in the under 13 and teenage brackets. About 35 percent are under 13 and around 38 percent fall between 13 and 17.

Roblox operates as a user-generated platform where players create and share games that range from simple obstacle courses and role-playing worlds to simulations such as running shops, attending virtual schools or socialising in digital neighbourhoods. The games also include open chat, private messaging and the ability to form groups or invite others into shared spaces. The platform encourages interaction through avatars, friend requests and in-game communication, which can continue across multiple sessions.

Safety features exist, including content filters and parental controls, but reporting by regulators, researchers and media organisations has documented cases where these systems are bypassed or prove insufficient.

Investigations have found that predators can move conversations from public chats to private messages, build familiarity through repeated interactions and then attempt to move communication to other platforms. The combination of a large base of young users, persistent social interaction and user-controlled environments creates conditions in which grooming can take place if safeguards fail or are not actively enforced.

In February 2026, Mathrubhumi wrote about a documented case involving Ethan Dallas, a 15-year-old from San Diego, California in the United States, who had been diagnosed with autism. Ethan had played Roblox since age seven, eventually befriending a user who called himself “Nate.” Nate taught Ethan how to disable parental controls, and their conversations gradually turned sexual. They then moved to Discord, online platform where people create private or public servers to chat through text, voice and video. Nate demanded explicit photographs and threatened to release their chat logs if Ethan refused.

Ethan became irritable, aggressive and emotionally unstable. Subsequently, his parents placed him in a residential treatment centre, where he stayed for nearly a year. He eventually confided in his mother, Beck Dallas, about Nate. Four months later, he died by suicide.

Investigators determined that “Nate” was Timothy O’Connor, a 37-year-old man arrested in a separate case involving child pornography and distributing harmful material to minors.

In September 2025, Beck Dallas filed a lawsuit against Roblox and Discord, arguing that both platforms were marketed to children under 13 but permitted adults to interact with minors through private chats and voice features without adequate safeguards. Reports indicate multiple similar cases are pending against both companies.

Roblox claimed it took “swift action against those found to be breaking our rules” and operated an age-verification process certified by independent experts, limiting children by default to chatting with users of a similar age, BBC reported on March 26, 2026. The company said it had also blocked children from chatting with adults.

However, an independent Roblox developer, who volunteers for a nonprofit online safety organisation and asked the BBC to be identified only as “Sam,” was quoted as saying that he had seen children lured into contact with strangers on the platform. He added that users were being led to external chat platforms, a practice Roblox prohibits. Concerns submitted through the platform’s reporting system were accepted roughly 30% of the time, he said.

Sam stressed that parents should watch their children at all times while on the platform. “When playing Roblox, children need to be monitored 24/7,” he was quoted as saying.

The platform’s vulnerabilities have been cited in investigations and legal cases as part of a wider ecosystem of predatory networks that have exploited similar tools to reach children.

In a separate case, an online group, CVLT, also known as Cult, was an international neo Nazi and nihilistic network founded in 2019 by Rohan Sandeep Rane, a then 23 year old Indian immigrant living in Antibes, France, who built it initially as a Discord community during the COVID 19 lockdown. Rane and other members drew in vulnerable minors globally, targeting children with mental health conditions or histories of sexual abuse. They coerced victims into producing child sexual abuse material and pressured them into degrading acts, including cutting themselves with razor blades, carving members’ names into their skin, and in some cases attempting suicide on video livestream. U.S. law enforcement documented exploitation of roughly 16 minors worldwide.

Rane was arrested in France in 2021 and has remained in French custody since 2022 on separate child exploitation charges there. In 2025, the U.S. Department of Justice charged four CVLT members, including Rane, with engaging in a child exploitation enterprise, an offence that carries a potential life sentence.

Law enforcement have identified CVLT as a direct precursor to 764, a larger and more entrenched child exploitation network whose founder was inspired by CVLT after contact with one of its members.

Cybersecurity firm McAfee previously put Roblox’s total registered user count at 150 million.

Several individuals, groups, counties, cities and states in the United States have filed lawsuits against Roblox, accusing the platform of enabling online predators.

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