BURLINGTON, Vt. (AP) — A television producer pleaded not guilty Wednesday to charges in connection with paying a Nevada woman to bring her 9-year-old daughter to Vermont to engage in illegal sexual activity at a Ludlow ski house.
John Griffin, 44, entered the plea in federal court in Burlington Wednesday and is being held pending trial.
In court documents, prosecutors described the Stamford, Connecticut, resident as a wealthy man who “has tried to deceive, delete, and spend his way out of being held accountable.”
Griffin worked for CNN for eight years and the network said Wednesday that he had been fired.
Griffin used online messaging services Kik and Google Hangouts to talk to people reportedly being parents of young girls, saying, among other things, that young women should be trained to “be sexually subservient and inferior to men,” prosecutors wrote in a news release.
He is also accused of attempting to pay off another member of the family, prosecutors said in court documents.
Griffin’s Vermont attorney David Kirby declined comment on Wednesday.
