The father of a Glenfield Middle School student in Montclair has sued the district, alleging that inadequate safeguards on his 14-year-old daughter’s school-issued laptop allowed an unknown man to contact her online and coerce her into sexually explicit video chats.
The girl first encountered the person while using Roblox during the 2024–25 school year and was persuaded to download Discord, where the two exchanged messages and video chatted, according to the lawsuit, filed in Essex County Superior Court on Aug. 10.
The man eventually tried to persuade the girl to fly to Washington state to meet him and coerced her into “provocative, sexual, and pornographic” activity during live chats, the lawsuit alleges.
Her father claims Montclair Public Schools failed to adequately monitor students’ internet use and did not install filters or other controls to prevent students from accessing inappropriate content or communicating with strangers.
District officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the suit.
The lawsuit claims the board of education and school employees “were deliberately indifferent” to the child’s constitutional rights by failing to adequately screen or train employees on laptop safety and security protocols.
The school also failed in its duty to notify the girl’s parents that their daughter had interacted with an unknown man
As a result of the district’s alleged failures, the girl has sustained “permanent emotional trauma and distress” and has undergone counseling and medical treatment, court papers state.
Roblox has faced dozens of lawsuits across the country alleging children were sexually exploited by predators who contacted them through the gaming platform.
In December 2025, the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation consolidated 31 federal lawsuits and identified another 48 related cases involving similar allegations. Those cases include claims that predators groomed children on Roblox before moving conversations to platforms such as Discord, Snapchat and Instagram.
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