Former CNN producer who boasted of grooming kids 'as young as 7 years old' pleads guilty to sexual crimes against children

Former CNN senior producer John Griffin pleaded guilty Monday in federal court to using interstate commerce to ultimately lure, coerce, and rape a 9-year-old child in his Vermont ski house.

According to the unsealed indictment, the 45-year-old pedophile boasted online that he had groomed young girls "as young as 7 years old" and stated that inside any female is a "wanton whore" exploitable "regardless of her age."

The latest

Griffin, a father of three, pleaded guilty Monday to "using a facility of interstate commerce to attempt to persuade, induce, entice or coerce a minor to engage in unlawful sexual activity" — one of the three charges brought against him.

The plea agreement said, "John Griffin agrees to plead guilty because he is, in fact, guilty of the above crime," reported VTDigger.org.

The Associated Press indicated that, as part of the plea deal, the government will drop two enticement of a minor counts against Griffin.

U.S. District Judge William K. Sessions III said that the pedophile faces between 10 years and life in prison, as well as a fine of up to $250,000.

Extra to prison time, the pedophile — who has evidently enjoyed the company of other sexual degenerates in jail — faces five years to life on supervised release and will be required to register as a sex offender and participate in sex offender treatment.

The former producer of the now-canceled CNN morning program "New Day" and Chris Cuomo's show will also be prohibited from interacting with anybody under the age of 18 and will be barred from areas where children congregate, including schools, theme parks, and playgrounds.

Griffin will also have to pay full restitution to his victims. Griffin will be sentenced on March 20, 2023.

What are the details?

Last December, while still on CNN's payroll, Griffin, of Stamford, Connecticut, was charged with three counts of using a facility of interstate commerce to attempt to entice underage girls to engage in unlawful sexual activity and was arrested by the FBI on Dec. 10, 2021.

At the time of the pedophile's arrest, Janeen DiGuiseppi, special agent in charge of the FBI Albany field office, suggested that the allegations were "deeply disturbing."

The U.S attorney's office for the District of Vermont indicated that Griffin had reached out to people purporting to be parents of minor daughters and sought to persuade them to allow him to "train their daughters to be sexually submissive."

Griffin reportedly met then-48-year-old Heather Carriker online and persuaded her that her adopted daughter needed to be sexually "trained properly."

Fox News Digital reported that Griffin also told Carriker, "One of the big lies of this society is that women are delicate innocent angels and they are in actuality, naturally, the dirtiest sluts possible, in EVERY metric."

The former CNN producer paid $3,000 for the now-convicted sex offender and her adopted 9-year-old to fly from Nevada to Boston.

Griffin picked them up at the airport and then drove them to his house in Ludlow, Vermont, where he, aided by Carriker, sexually assaulted the child.

When the child's biological mother, Catherine O’Sullivan, discovered the messages exchanged between Carriker and the then-CNN employee, she informed authorities of possible child sex abuse.

Carriker was arrested in August 2020 and charged 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, reported KLAS.

Carriker was convicted in April.

According to the indictment, this was not a one-off for Griffin. The pedophile allegedly attempted to entice two other children over the internet to engage in sexual activity.

In April 2020, Griffin allegedly tried to prompt a mother to molest her 14-year-old daughter over video chat. Months later, he tried to lure a purported mother of a 16-year-old to take a "little mother-daughter trip" to his Ludlow rape lair for "sexual training" involving the child.