The girl was allegedly taken to Griffin’s Vermont vacation home by her adoptive mother.
The mother of one of the alleged victims of disgraced CNN producer John Griffin spoke out about the sexual exploitation of her daughter for the first time on Wednesday in an interview with National Review.
Griffin, who worked as lead producer for former anchor Chris Cuomo, pleaded not guilty to three counts of child sex trafficking on Wednesday during his arraignment in a U.S. District Court in Vermont. The indictment alleges that Griffin used BDSM websites to message adult women, whom he then convinced to bring their minor daughters to his Ludlow, Vt., ski house for “sexual subservience” training.
The mother of one of Griffin’s victims, who chose to remain anonymous to protect her child, revealed that she was the first to discover and present the evidence of Griffin’s abuse to authorities. She said she was heartbroken to discover what Griffin had done but remains hopeful her daughter will recover.
“I want everyone to humanize my little baby princess because she is a little girl. If you were to see her and see how fun and gorgeous and wonderful she is, that even though they did this to her, she’s still going to be ok,” she said. “They’re not going to take her life too. She says if she gets any money out of this she wants to start a foundation to help children like her.”
“My child was the last to be abused. The last! Other girls that they’re talking about came before my daughter, so people knew about this sh**. He had a DUI in October. People are calling me a hero and that I saved hundreds of girls. I’m not that special.” She added, “I just care about being a hero to one little girl, my baby.”
The girl was in the care of her adoptive mother, Heather Katz, when she visited Griffin’s Vermont home in July 2020, the girl’s biological mother said. (Katz and her now deceased husband Doug, who had previously been something of a father figure to the girl, filed a restraining order against the mother and adopted her daughter after she was sentenced to three years in prison for a nonviolent offense.)
“I would never give my baby girl up. Heather and Doug ended up getting married. Next thing I know they adopted her and changed her name. I’m inconsolable. They didn’t let me talk to my daughter for two years. They took her to therapists to brainwash her to stop missing me. Then they let her talk to me again in 2018. She never should have been taken away from me,” the mother said.
Upon the pair’s return from Vermont, the mother went through her daughter’s phone to find that Katz had been using it as her personal device to coordinate BDSM meet-ups. The mother said Katz had a revolving door of “doms,” or dominant men, whom she found via suspicious websites. Griffin likely found Katz on one of those sites, such as alt.com, the mother believes.
The phone had been logged in to Katz’s email account and the mother found a Venmo receipt for $1,350.00 from Griffin in the inbox, screenshots of which were provided to National Review. This sum presumably covered the cost of the airline tickets for the pair to fly from Nevada to Boston, as the indictment alleges. Also on the girl’s phone were missed calls as well as text messages from Griffin, other screenshots show.
One text from Griffin to the girl reads: “I more than like you. I love you. And I always will. You will never get to tell me what to do, though. That’s not how this works.”
The camera roll on the girl’s phone also included photos of bruised and beaten female genitalia, which the mother claims Katz put on the device.
When her daughter was returned to her custody again following the Vermont trip, the mother says she found extremely disturbing diary entries her daughter had written detailing the sexual deeds the girl witnessed and was forced to participate in. In one note, the girl said she was instructed to wear a sex toy and perform sex acts on Katz at Griffin’s urging.
The girl told a police-affiliated social worker that she had engaged in explicit sexual activity at the luxury Vermont residence with both Griffin and Katz, according to the police report. Katz was arrested in August on 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.
Griffin had a history of viewing “web-pages featuring pornographic videos about sex with mothers and daughters,” according to authorities.
During a conversation she had with her daughter following the trip, the mother said the girl used the phrase “hard limits” to describe the sexual acts she told Griffin were out of bounds for her personally, as a nine-year-old girl. She said her daughter also told her about $600 she had stored under her bed, which she allegedly won in a game of darts with Griffin in Vermont. Griffin allegedly bet the girl $300 a game. If she lost, she had to perform fellatio on Griffin, according to the mother.
Prior to the trip, Katz had allegedly told the biological mother that she was visiting her boyfriend, whom she had communicated virtually with for three months and had never met, in Vermont, and that the child would be accompanying her. The mother claims she repeatedly asked Katz to leave her daughter in Las Vegas with her but that Katz was adamant about taking her.
While they were in Vermont, the daughter allegedly video-chatted with her biological mother, who says she saw Katz walk through the kitchen naked in the background of the call. The next day, the mother says, her daughter called her and said Katz had gone to the hospital and that she was in the Vermont house by herself with Griffin.
“The evidence against Griffin also includes a video captured by a drone operated by Griffin as it returned to Griffin’s Ludlow ski house shortly after 5 a.m. on July 20, 2020, showing the completely naked nine-year-old girl, standing immediately next to Griffin in his underwear,” the motion for detention read.
The mother insisted to National Review that none of the members of the daughter’s biological family took any money as a bribe from Griffin, although she claimed Katz’s family may have. The mother is asking for the public to respect her privacy and that of her daughter as Griffin’s trial unfolds.
Attorneys representing Griffin and Katz did not immediately respond to a request for comment.