A former CNN producer has been sentenced to 19 years in prison for molesting a 9-year-old girl.
The former producer, John Griffin, 45, was fired from the network after he was arrested.
In December, Griffin pleaded guilty to using interstate commerce to entice and coerce the girl to engage in sexual activity in exchange for the state dropping two charges of enticement of a minor.
At the time of his arrest, the Justice Department issued a statement saying, “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,” the Justice Department continued. “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 statement said that Griffin later attempted to entice two other children over the internet to engage in sexual activity.
Griffin was arrested for the molestation on December 10, 2021, one day after a grand jury indicted him.
The sex offender worked at CNN for approximately eight years.
At the time of his arrest, a CNN spokesperson said in a statement saying “we only learned of his arrest this afternoon and have suspended him pending investigation.”
After serving his time, Griffin will be subject to an additional 15 years of supervised release.
Under the terms of the supervised release, the Washington Times reports that “he also cannot have contact with people under the age of 18, except in the presence of an adult who has been approved by a probation officer, and is prohibited from being in areas where children congregate, such as schools, playgrounds and theme parks, unless approved by the probation office beforehand.”