A CNN staffer has been accused and charged with luring a mom and her young daughter to his home in order to “train” her to be sexually submissive, the Daily Mail reported Saturday.
“John Griffin, who worked on the CNN show New Day, was charged with three counts that he used a ‘facility of interstate commerce to abuse underage girls,'” the outlet said.
A grand jury in Vermont indicted the 44-year-old, who is from Stamford, Connecticut, of trying to entice the girls to take part in sexual activities.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office District of Vermont detailed the case in a press release on Friday:
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.
On these communication platforms, Griffin sought to persuade parents to allow him to train their daughters to be sexually submissive. In June of 2020, Griffin advised a mother of 9- and 13-year-old daughters that the mother’s responsibility was to see that her older daughter was “trained properly.” 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.
The indictment included allegations that Griffin tried to entice two other children online to engage in sexual activity.
He faces ten years to life behind bars if he is convicted on the federal counts.
“We take the charges against Mr. Griffin incredibly seriously,” a CNN spokesperson stated Friday, adding, “We only learned of his arrest this afternoon and have suspended him pending investigation.”
He began his career with CNN in 2013 on the show, New Day, when Chris Cuomo hosted, and his most recent role was producer for the network’s senior political analyst, John Avlon.
On what appeared to be his LinkedIn profile, Griffin listed himself as a “Senior Producer at CNN.”
Last week, CNN fired Cuomo Prime Time host Chris Cuomo once it reviewed documents showing he used media sources to find information on his brother, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s, sexual harassment accusers.