John Griffin, a former CNN producer, pled guilty to one of the charges against him about a year after he was accused with enticing a youngster to his Vermont home for sex.
“John Griffin agrees to plead guilty because he is, in fact, guilty of the above crime,” the plea agreement said, according to the Vermont Digger, a nonprofit online news site.
Griffin pled guilty to “using a facility of interstate commerce to attempt to persuade, induce, entice or coerce a minor to engage in unlawful sexual activity.” in U.S. District Court in Burlington, Vermont. The remaining charges against him were dropped.
Ex-CNN producer John Griffin pleads guilty to child sex charge https://t.co/9CNh38UzpY pic.twitter.com/sN7rIjEjxN
— New York Post (@nypost) December 13, 2022
Griffin had resided in Stamford, Connecticut, but has been incarcerated since his arrest in December of last year. After he was accused with child sex assault, CNN dismissed him.
Griffin was accused of luring a Nevada lady and her 9-year-old daughter to visit him in July 2020 by covering their travel expenses in excess of $3,000. Prosecutors say that the girl was subjected to sexual coercion at Griffin’s residence in Ludlow, Vermont.
In the same instance, he was also served with a $15 million lawsuit.
Longtime CNN producer John Griffin slapped with $15M civil suit amid federal child trafficking casehttps://t.co/0BkHIyULwS
— Fox News (@FoxNews) January 11, 2022
Fox News stated that the evidence in Griffin’s federal charge included a video of a “naked 9-year-old girl” with Griffin, according to court documents.
“When confronted with this video during an interview by FBI agents, Griffin’s first response was merely to suggest he was not looking at the naked girl, despite that she was standing so close to him to be touching,” a pre-trial detention memo stated, according to Fox.
According to the New York Post, the mother of the kid faced child abuse and child sex assault charges.
Prosecutors stated that the episode that led to Griffin’s arrest was part of a pattern in which he attempted to have parents of underage girls send their daughters to him for sexual education.
“According to the indictment, from April to July of 2020, Griffin utilized the messaging applications Kik and Google Hangouts to communicate with people purporting to be parents of minor daughters, conveying to them, among other ideas, that a ‘woman is a woman regardless of her age,’ and that women should be sexually subservient and inferior to men,” the Department of Justice said in a news release at the time Griffin was charged.
“On these communication platforms, Griffin sought to persuade parents to allow him to train their daughters to be sexually submissive,” the release said.
“In April of 2020, Griffin proposed to engage in a ‘virtual training session’ over a video chat that would include him instructing the mother and her 14-year-old daughter to remove their clothing and touch each other at his direction,” the release stated.
“In June of 2020, Griffin proposed to a purported mother of a 16-year-old daughter that she take a ‘little mother-daughter trip’ to Griffin’s Ludlow ski house for sexual training involving the child,” the release said.
On March 20, Griffin will be sentenced. ABC reports that he faces between 10 years and life behind bars.
Griffin was fined $250,000 and ordered to pay his victims an undisclosed sum of compensation. In accordance with the terms of his plea agreement, fifty percent of the proceeds from the sale of his Vermont residence and Mercedes will be deposited into the court register.
Griffin has also agreed to surrender his Tesla and other electronic equipment.
Griffin is required to register as a sexual offender and must serve five years of supervised release.