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Wife of ex-CNN producer wants to save his assets from sex assault suit

BRIDGEPORT — The wife of former CNN producer John Griffin, who is charged with enticing young girls to his home so he could sexually assault them, is asking a judge to protect her husband’s assets so that she can take them in a divorce.

In a motion filed in Superior Court in Bridgeport, Allyson Griffin sought to intervene in a lawsuit filed against John Griffin by one of his alleged victims in an effort to “protect her interests.”

Allyson Griffin recently filed for divorce from her husband in Stamford Superior Court. According to her motion, she is concerned that the plaintiff in the lawsuit will be seeking the same assets from her husband as she is seeking in her divorce action.

A hearing on her motion has been scheduled for April 7.

“The Griffin family matters should be kept as private as possible,” said Allyson Griffin’s lawyer, Gary Cohen. He declined further comment.

“Mrs. Griffin is apparently seeking to participate in our efforts to restrain and attach John Griffin’s assets. Regardless of who is involved we will make certain that Griffin never has cash available to molest another child,” said Attorney Joel Faxon, who is suing John Griffin on behalf of a 9-year-old girl who claims she was sexually assaulted by him.

Griffin’s lawyer, Robert Berke, declined comment.

Griffin, 44, of Stamford, a longtime staffer and producer for CNN, was fired earlier this year following his arrest by the FBI on federal charges alleging he tried to lure women to his Vermont ski home to train their daughters to be “sexually submissive.”

Griffin was indicted by a federal grand jury in Vermont with three counts of using a facility of interstate commerce to attempt to entice minors to engage in unlawful sexual activity.

According to the indictment, Griffin began using the alternative website, alt.com, to seek women who were “submissive” and “open-minded.”

Griffin then used messaging features on Kik and Google Hangouts to communicate with some of the women, pretending to be the parents of underage girls. In the communications, Griffin tried to persuade parents to let him “train their daughters to be sexually submissive,” the indictment stated.

In June 2020, Griffin told a mother of 9- and 13-year-old girls that she needed to have her daughters “trained properly,” the indictment stated. Griffin then transferred about $3,000 to the woman for plane tickets so she and her 9-year-old could fly from Nevada to Boston’s Logan airport, the indictment stated.

The mother and child flew to Boston in July 2020. Griffin picked them up and drove them to his home in Ludlow, Vt., where prosecutors said the girl was forced to engage in illegal sexual contact.

The indictment details other allegations that Griffin tried to entice two other children over the internet to participate in sexual activity.

In April 2020, Griffin coordinated a “virtual training session,” where he instructed a woman and her 14-year-old daughter to remove their clothes during the video chat, prosecutors said.

In June 2020, prosecutors said, Griffin offered a trip to a woman and her 16-year-old daughter to his Vermont ski house for sexual “training” involving the child.

In one of the conversations, Griffin told someone claiming to be a father that he “sexually trained girls as young as 7 years old,” the indictment stated.