A 19-year-old woman is suing Omegle, a free online chat room that randomly pairs strangers for video chats or text messaging, alleging it matched her at age 11 with a sexual predator who forced her to share naked photos and videos of herself.
The woman, only identified in the suit as A.M., is seeking $20 million in non-economic damages, as well as unspecified punitive damages against the company.
Omegle is a limited liability corporation that was organized in Oregon, and founded in March 2009 by an 18-year-old home-schooled student, Leif K-Brooks, who is now 31. Its principal place of business is in Florida. The suit was filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Portland.
K-Brooks did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.
A.M. was 11 in 2014 and living in Michigan when Omegle paired her with Ryan Scott Fordyce, then in his late 30s, who promised he would help her “feel better,” according to the suit. They continued to communicate over the next three years, with Fordyce coercing A.M. to record herself masturbating and sometimes perform for his friends, and to use the chat site to recruit other kids for him to abuse, the suit says.
“On certain days of the week, he would assign Plaintiff to go back onto Omegle for a set number of hours and find other girls who ‘[he] would like.’ A.M.’s task would be to take screenshots of them, get their contact information, and relay everything to Fordyce,” attorneys Barbara C. Long and Carrie Goldberg wrote in the suit.
Fordyce regularly warned A.M. that if she reported their contacts to police he’d share her photos and videos and she’d face arrest, the suit says.
The site’s home page invite to “Talk to Strangers!,” along with its inherent dangers and lack of protections - such as pairing children with adults, and not verifying any user’s age or monitoring or flagging abusive users - is reckless and negligent, the suit contends.
The site says users must be “18+ or 13+ with parental permission and supervision” to use Omegle, but there’s no verification of ages.
“Between May of 2015 and May of 2021, the text on Omegle’s homepage included a sentence that read: ‘Predators have been known to use Omegle, so please be careful.’ Instead of serving as a warning, though, the statement is an admission that Omegle was well aware that crimes to children were occurring on its platform,” A.M.’s lawyers wrote in the suit.
The company has failed to identify and ban predatory users through inappropriate language detected in chats or its video monitoring function, or given users a way to report problems or “abusive content,” the suit said.
Instead, the site’s home page states, “Omegle video chat is moderated but no moderation is perfect. Users are solely responsible for their behavior while using Omegle.’’
The company “acted with an outrageous indifference to a highly unreasonable risk of harm and with a conscious indifference to the health, safety, and welfare of others, including Plaintiff,” the product liability suit alleges. It also accuses the site of promoting prostitution and sex trafficking.
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On Jan. 12, 2018, when A.M. was 15, her parents were contacted by Canadian law enforcement, who had identified their daughter based on the high school sweatshirt she was wearing in a picture they viewed. The Canadian officers said they had raided the home of a man named Fordyce and recovered 3,055 files of child pornography on his devices, including 220 images and videos of A.M.
Fordyce last month pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography for the purpose of distribution or making available child pornography, and communicating with a person under the age of 18 years old by means of telecommunication.
A.M., who once was a strong student and outgoing, became withdrawn from friends and family, missed school and now suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and panic attacks. She can no longer wear her hair to her side because it was Fordyce’s preference when he gave her assignments, the suit said.
A.M. is now living in New Zealand and in her second year of college studying psychology with the hope of becoming a professional in children’s mental health, according to her lawyers.
“There’s no reason for a video streaming product that randomly pairs adults and children to exist at all, let alone without any real safety controls. This is not about limiting internet access or screen time, it’s about consequences for a product that knowingly provides and profits from predators’ access to children,” A.M. said in a statement.
“This lawsuit is bigger than me, the damage has already been done to me, but my team and I are determined to protect the children after me that are just as vulnerable as I was. Nobody deserves this.’’
Fordyce, now 46, last month pleaded guilty in Canada to distributing pornographic images of young girls. He’s scheduled to be sentenced next month, according to The Brandon Sun.
According to a BBC report earlier this year, Omegle grew in popularity during the coronavirus pandemic while children were isolated from friends - from 34 million visits a month globally in January 2020 to 65 million in January of this year.
-- Maxine Bernstein
Email at mbernstein@oregonian.com; 503-221-8212
Follow on Twitter @maxoregonian