by WorldTribune Staff, November 5, 2023
A former senior CNN producer settled a lawsuit brought on behalf of a 9-year-old girl he had sexually abused.
John Griffin, who confessed to coercing a woman online into bringing her 9-year-old daughter to his Vermont chalet for illicit sexual acts, was sentenced in June to 19 years in prison.
Griffin, 47, settled the civil suit on Tuesday in Connecticut Superior Court. The suit filed last year on behalf of the victim, now 11, sought $15 million in damages and fees.
Related: Pedophile News Network: New names, disturbing details surface in growing CNN scandal, December 19, 2021
According to the federal indictment, between April and July 2020, Griffin invited women and their underage daughters to his $2 million ski chalet in Ludlow, Vermont, “for the purposes of sexual training.”
Griffin, a father of three, bragged to one woman that he had trained a girl as young as 7 and insisted a “woman is a woman regardless of her age,” the federal filing states.
A Nevada woman, the adoptive mother of the 9-year-old, accepted an offer to go to Griffin’s chalet along with $3,500 in cash, according to court papers.
While the woman and the girl were at the home in July 2020, Griffin viewed “pornographic videos about sex with mothers and daughters.” The child was then forced to perform lewd sex acts on her adoptive mother as Griffin watched.
A drone that Griffin operated captured him in his underwear and the completely nude child standing next to him, according to a court filing.
A CNN employee for eight years, Griffin was a producer for CNN’s now-canceled morning program “New Day.” On his LinkedIn profile, Griffin boasted of having worked “shoulder-to-shoulder with lead anchor Chris Cuomo, seeing him through each show and producing live breaking news across the country and around the world.”
CNN fired him shortly after the allegations surfaced.
Griffin’s wife is divorcing him, and his children will be adults by the time he is released from federal prison.