THE NEW YORK TIMES: He made a friend on Roblox, their relationship turned sinister

In December 2023, Ethan Dallas texted his mother, Becca Dallas, that something was weighing on his mind.

“I’m sorry. I feel so bad about myself. I feel like I’m worthless,” the 15-year-old wrote. “Promise you won’t get mad if I tell you?”

Dallas took Ethan, who was autistic, to a Denny’s near their home in San Diego. There, he made a confession about Roblox, his favourite video game, which he had played since he was 7.

Years earlier, a Roblox player who said he was a child named Nate had messaged Ethan. They became close, playing the online game together every day after school and chatting late into the night. Nate eventually showed Ethan how to disable some of Roblox’s parental controls.

Their conversations turned sexual and moved to the messaging app Discord, where Nate demanded that Ethan provide explicit photographs of himself. Ethan complied after Nate threatened to publicly share their conversations.

Ethan began having anger fits, Dallas said. The outbursts were so intense that in 2022, she and her husband placed him in a residential treatment centre for a year. In April 2024, four months after telling his mother about Nate, Ethan killed himself.

In April, Dallas learned from law enforcement in Florida that Nate was likely Timothy O’Connor, a 37-year-old man. He had been arrested on separate charges of possessing child pornography and transmitting harmful material to minors.

Florida law enforcement worked with the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children, which Dallas had contacted about Ethan’s situation, and connected his case to O’Connor.

“I couldn’t believe it,” said Dallas, 47. She added that she thought Roblox “was a children’s game.”

On Friday, Dallas sued Roblox, accusing it of wrongful death. Her lawsuit, likely the first of its kind against the popular game, spotlights the potential dangers of a platform that is aimed at children 13 and younger but where adults can freely come and go. Her lawsuit recounts in painful detail Ethan’s experience playing the game.

In Roblox, players enter a “metaverse,” a virtual world where they can play and chat through digital characters that can build obstacle courses and solve puzzles. Around 40 million of the platform’s users — more than a third — are under 13, making Roblox the preeminent gathering place for children online. Facebook and Instagram require users to be at least 13 to open an account.

Anyone can create an account on Roblox and play for free. Adults can use the platform’s communications features, like private chats and voice conversations, to talk with children, safety experts said.

The sheer number of children on Roblox has made it a target for online predators, said Ron Kerbs, the founder of Kidas, a digital safety software company.

Roblox has taken steps to mitigate risks, including introducing measures in July to verify players’ ages, such as scanning videos of their faces, he noted. But those features can be circumvented, such as when a user plays on someone else’s account, he said.

“It’s a serious issue,” Kerbs said. “When you have so many users, these things are going to happen without strict moderation.”

Legal action against Roblox has started intensifying. In April, Florida’s attorney general, James Uthmeier, opened a child safety investigation into the company. Last month, Louisiana’s attorney general, Liz Murrill, sued Roblox over issues with predators in the game, calling it “the perfect place for pedophiles.”

More than 20 lawsuits accusing Roblox of enabling sexual exploitation, which is when users are coerced or manipulated into sharing sexually explicit material or performing sexual acts, have been filed in federal courts this year, according to a New York Times review of public records.

About a dozen personal injury law firms are coordinating on child safety lawsuits against Roblox, said Alexandra Walsh, a partner at Anapol Weiss, the firm handling Dallas’ case. The goal is to establish a legal precedent that could hold Roblox and social media companies like Meta and Snap accountable for predators on their platforms, she said.

The aim, Walsh said, is to establish a path that is not blocked by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a 1996 law that protects companies from liability for posts made by users on their sites. Dallas’ suit contends that Roblox’s design and lack of safety guardrails, not the content of the game itself, are what enabled predation.

Dallas, who is suing in Superior Court of San Francisco County, near Roblox’s headquarters, also sued Discord. She is seeking unspecified financial compensation for emotional distress caused by Ethan’s death.

“We are deeply saddened by this tragic, unimaginable loss,” a Roblox spokesperson said. Child safety issues are an industrywide problem, he said, adding that the company was working to develop new safety features and cooperates with law enforcement.

Discord is “deeply committed to safety” and requires users to be at least 13, a company spokesperson said. The messaging platform uses “advanced technology and trained safety teams to proactively find and remove content that violates our policies,” she said.

Ethan, who had four older siblings and was best friends with his two younger nieces, was known as the class clown, said Lisa Kogan, his special education teacher from 2021 until his death.

He often showed up in an apron and a chef’s hat to make snacks for his classmates, she said, and by age 9 he had taught himself to code and play piano. He was also the star pitcher on a baseball team for youths with disabilities.

Ethan wanted to be a Disney Imagineer when he grew up, Kogan said, and was “someone who touched the lives of those around him.”

Because of his learning disabilities, Ethan was bullied by some neighborhood youths, Dallas said. He turned to video games like Roblox as an escape, often finding the virtual characters easier to socialize with than others his age, she said.

In 2015, Ethan started playing Roblox with permission from his parents, who set up parental controls on his account. Those controls allowed them to restrict how much time Ethan spent in the game and to approve friend requests, but did not stop communication between him and adults.

Ethan spent hours a day on his computer, where he also played games like Minecraft and Rocket League. He streamed his gameplay on YouTube and Twitch, where he had a small community of followers. Dallas felt comfortable that Roblox was monitoring Ethan’s conversations, she said, because a handful of times, he was temporarily barred when he used phrases like “stupid ass.”

“I never heard about anything inappropriate going on, or I would’ve busted through the door,” she said.

When Ethan told her about Nate, Dallas was horrified. She immediately reached out to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which eventually put her in touch with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s cybercrime squad. But she let Ethan continue playing Roblox while she and her husband closely watched over his account, including checking his messages, because he was “addicted” to the game, she said.

The National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children declined to comment on Ethan’s case.

By then, Ethan was no longer in contact with Nate. They had stopped communicating in 2021, Dallas said, but her son remained fearful of Nate.

Unknown to the Dallas family, O’Connor had separately been charged in Florida in 2021 with possessing child pornography and transmitting harmful material to minors. In December 2023, he was deemed mentally unfit to stand trial, public records show. O’Connor’s lawyers declined to comment.

Weeks before his death, Ethan seemed normal, Dallas said. He had struggled to complete schoolwork after returning from the residential treatment center, but his work had picked up. He was learning to drive and wanted to buy his dad’s car and paint it purple.

One night, Ethan woke her up with a knock on her bedroom door. “He just came and laid his head on my lap, and kept saying, ‘I love you,’” Dallas said. “And I said, ‘I love you, too.’”

The next morning, her husband found Ethan lifeless in his room.

Dallas said she hoped her lawsuit would lead to changes that made Roblox safer. This month, she started a foundation in Ethan’s name to help children struggling with mental health issues.

“I want his story shared,” she said. “To scare parents to know that I thought my kid was safe, and that it wasn’t going to happen to me.”

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Young people seeking support can phone beyondblue on 1300 22 4636 or go to headspace.org.au.

Lifeline: 13 11 14.

If you or someone you know needs help, contact 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732) or Sexual Assault Counselling Australia on 1800 211 028.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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