A 14-year-old girl and her mother have filed a lawsuit against News Corp.'s social networking site, MySpace.com, alleging that its security measures are ineffective and enabled a sexual predator to attack the teenager.

The lawsuit, filed by Barry & Loewy LLP on Monday, seeks at least $30 million in penalties against the site, which is popular among teenagers. The suit claims that a 19-year-old contacted the girl through MySpace.com in April, claiming he was a high-school senior. According to the suit, the man obtained her personal details and, after several e-mails and phone calls, took her on a date, after which he assaulted her. The man was arrested on May 19, according to media reports.

"The suit alleges that MySpace.com had full knowledge that sexual predators were contacting young children on the website but did nothing to stop it," the firm said in a statement on its site. "Additionally, the suit alleges that MySpace.com fraudulently represents it has security measures in place to protect its young members but, in reality, it does not."

The lawsuit is the latest security incident to plague the social networking site. Earlier this year, a MySpace posting alerted high school officials in Riverton, Kansas that five teenagers apparently planned to go on a shooting spree. This weekend, the principal of the school testified that he believed that the students did not plan anything serious, though the student accused of being the ringleader had a small cache of weapons, including a rifle, revolver, shotgun, ammunition, six swords and 40 knives, according to the report.

In April, the company hired Hemanshu Nigam, a security investigator at Microsoft and a former prosecutor, to head its security department.

"No one is more committed to Internet safety than MySpace," Chief Security Officer Nigam said in a statement e-mailed to SecurityFocus. "We take aggressive measures to protect our members. Ultimately, Internet safety is a shared responsibility. We encourage everyone on the Internet to engage in smart web practices and have open family dialogue about how to apply offline lessons in the online world."

UPDATE: The article was updated with a statement from MySpace.com at 8:30 a.m. PST.