Attorney Joel Faxon has filed multimillion-dollar lawsuit on behalf of 9-year-old ‘Jane Doe’ against Griffin
Fox News
Michael Ruiz
WARNING: SOME DETAILS MAY BE DISTURBING
The 9-year-old Nevada girl whose adoptive mother allegedly flew her to Vermont for a week of sex abuse at the hands of longtime CNN producer John Griffin has been relocated to a safe home in Connecticut, according to her attorney.
“You can just imagine how traumatic being subjected to something like this is, and particularly for a child who’s that age,” Joel Faxon, who is representing the girl in a multimillion-dollar civil lawsuit against Griffin, told Fox News Digital. “She’s in a protected environment now, and thank God she’s there.”
In court filings last week, he sought a prejudgment remedy against Griffin as part of a lawsuit on behalf of the girl, identified only under the pseudonym Jane Doe. Under Connecticut law it would allow the plaintiff to secure assets before the case is resolved – tying up Griffin’s wealth in case anything happens.
“My main interest is in securing Griffin’s assets so that he doesn’t have the wherewithal to ever do this to another child,” said Faxon, a well-known civil trial attorney in New York, Vermont and Connecticut. “I’ve done a lot of sex trafficking cases over the years, and they get more and more depraved as time goes on.”
It’s a unique characteristic to Connecticut’s legal system.
“There’s no mechanism in the federal court to get a prejudgment remedy,” Faxon explained. “You can only attach someone’s assets after you have a trial or disposition that is rendered into a judgment. But we have a procedure in Connecticut where we can get a prejudgment attachment.”
To that end, he’s seeking a $15 million attachment on Griffin’s assets. However, he added, that doesn’t mean an eventual judgment couldn’t exceed that amount.
Griffin is awaiting trial on federal charges of child sex trafficking and attempted child sex trafficking.
Between April and July 2020, Griffin allegedly invited three women and their underage daughters over “for the purposes of sexual training,” according to the federal indictment. Only the Nevada woman took him up on his offer, according to prosecutors.
She faces state charges there, and although Griffin was mentioned by name in the criminal complaint against her in August 2020 and had his devices seized by the FBI a week later, he was not charged until last month.
Griffin allegedly paid the woman more than $3,000 to fly to Boston and then stay at his multimillion-dollar Vermont vacation home for a week of sex crimes that involved her young adopted daughter.
The evidence against Griffin allegedly includes drone video he took showing a “completely naked 9-year-old girl” standing next to him in his underwear, according to court filings.
“When confronted with this video during an interview by FBI agents, Griffin’s first response was merely to suggest he was not looking at the naked girl, despite that she was standing so close to him to be touching,” the prosecutor’s pretrial detention memo reads.
Fox News is not using the woman’s name to avoid exposing the child victim’s identity.
CNN promptly fired Griffin last month after learning of the charges.
“Prior to his arrest and indictment, we had no knowledge about the case,” a CNN spokesperson told Fox News Digital. The media outlet also said no CNN-owned devices issued to Griffin were seized when police served a search warrant on his electronics in September 2020.
If convicted, the former TV producer could face life in prison. He pleaded not guilty and is being held without bail in Vermont.
His attorney, David Kirby, declined to comment on the civil suit.
Fox News’ Rebecca Rosenberg contributed to this report.