John Griffin, a former CNN producer, was just sentenced to 19 years in prison and then another 15 years under supervised release. He pleaded guilty, in December of 2022, of using interstate commerce to entice and coerce a 9-year-old girl to engage in sexual activity. The incident took place at his Vermont ski house.
Griffin’s guilty plea in December of 2022 was a shift from his initial plea of not guilty in 2021. According to the AP, Griffin had two remaining counts of enticement of a minor that were being brought against him dropped as part of his 2022 plea deal.
According to the AP’s report on the details of that plea deal, Griffin met the woman who brought her young daughter to his ski house in 2020, during the summer, He then persuaded her to bring her daughter to his ski house in Ludlow, Vermont, for sexual activity. After persuading the woman to bring her daughter, he paid for the woman and girl to fly to Boston from their Nevada home, He then picked them up in Boston and drove them to the ski house in Vermont. Once there, he sexually assaulted the young girl.
The US Attorney’s Office in Vermont, alleging that, said, “Griffin later transferred over $3,000 to the mother for plane tickets so the mother and her 9-year-old daughter could fly from Nevada to Boston’s Logan airport. The mother and child flew to Boston in July of 2020, where Griffin picked them up in his Tesla and drove them to his Ludlow house. At the house, the daughter was directed to engage in, and did engage in, unlawful sexual activity.”
Griffin was then arrested in December of 2021, at which point he pleaded not guilty to the three counts brought against him. CNN, for which he had worked for 8 years at the time of his arrest, fired him shortly after he was arrested for the horrific crime.
The AP, reporting on Griffin’s penalties at the time he changed his tune and pleaded guilty, noted that in addition to the jail time and supervised release, he would have various restrictions placed on his conduct.
After he is released from prison, he cannot have contact with anyone under the age of 18 unless he is supervised by an adult who has been approved as a responsible supervisor by his probation officer. He will also be unable to visit areas where kids congregate, such as schools or playgrounds, unless his probation officer approves that visit. And that assumes he makes it out of prison, which isn’t certain given how prisoners tend to treat pedophiles.
According to prosecutors in the case, Griffin, before his arrest, would talk on Google Hangouts with the parents of underage girls about his sick sexual preferences and his idea that a “woman is a woman regardless of her age.” Additionally, he would tell those women that they should train their daughters to be “sexually submissive” to men. It is not clear why he was not reported and locked up long before he actually assaulted a young girl if he was making those comments online to multiple people.
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