Ex-CNN producer John Griffin pleads guilty to sex crime against 9-year-old girl

Former CNN producer John Griffin has pleaded guilty to “using interstate commerce for the enticement of a minor” after being arrested in 2021.

Griffin, who was fired from CNN following his arrest, was originally hit with three child sex crime charges but agreed to a plea deal that would see two counts of enticement of a minor dropped. The crime took place in 2020 when Griffin convinced mother Heather Carriker to fly out to his Vermont cabin with her 9-year-old daughter. From there, prosecutors say he engaged in sexual acts with the child with Carriker’s knowledge. She was also arrested and slapped with “two counts of child abuse, two counts of sexual assault against a child under 14 and one count of lewdness with a minor under 14.”

The former producer reportedly paid Carriker $3,000 for her participation in his assault of her daughter, but this was far from the first time he had tried to convince parents to give him access to their underage children. In fact, he had allegedly bragged to some of them that he was able to bring children as young as seven back to his home. He told the parents that he firmly believed a “woman is a woman regardless of her age” and that women should be sexually subservient to men, prosecutors claimed.

Sometimes, he would reportedly try to get the parents to engage in sexual acts with their children. In April of 2020, before flying Carriker and her daughter to his $2.5m home, he discussed doing a “virtual training session” with another mother and her 14-year-old daughter, where he would instruct the pair on undressing each other and committing sexual acts. Shortly after that, he asked another woman to bring her 16-year-old daughter on a “mother-daughter trip” to his home. The visit would, of course, involve the same type of sexual training.

Griffin would eventually be arrested on December 10, 2021, be terminated from his job, and plead not guilty to all three counts of enticement. But upon accepting the plea deal, the father-of-three is now facing up to a decade behind bars as well as paying an undetermined amount in restitution to his victims. He is also looking at a fine of up to $250,000 and will be forfeiting his Tesla, selling his Vermont cabin and a Mercedes vehicle, and donating half of the money he receives from those sales to the court.

He may be forced to register as a sex offender and receive treatment.

Carriker’s next hearing is scheduled to take place on December 22.

Sierra Marlee

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