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Warren man gets life sentence in child sex case
By Joe Gorman
YOUNGSTOWN
Judge Shirley Christian told a man she was sentencing Thursday on eight counts of child rape that he turned the victim’s haven into a hell.
“A home for a young child is supposed to be a safe haven,” Judge Christian told Brian Griffin, 26, of Warren, just before she handed down eight consecutive life sentences in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court. “Instead, it was a living hell.”
Griffin was convicted Feb. 24 by a jury of having sexual contact with a child who was 8 years old at the time the abuse started – from Feb. 1, 2012, to May 31, 2013, at a home in Campbell. Assistant Prosecutor Jennifer McLaughlin said Griffin was a relative of the family who was staying in the girl’s home.
The jury convicted Griffin of eight counts of rape and eight counts of gross sexual imposition, but Judge Christian found that the later charges were part of the same course of conduct and merged them with the rape counts. The Griffin case was indicted in 2014 after an investigation by Campbell police, who were informed of the abuse by the victim’s mother.
McLaughlin argued for a sentence of life with no parole, which she said Ohio law allows for when the victim is under 10 years old. McLaughlin said the victim testified that she was abused repeatedly by Griffin after her mother left for work in the morning. McLaughlin said the victim was abused more than the eight times for which he was convicted.
Because the victim was so young, she was unable to relate what was going on for a long time, and it is hard to understand the lifelong complications she will have to battle, McLaughlin said.
“She’s going to carry this with her during her life as a teenager and an adult,” McLaughlin said.
James Vivo, Griffin’s attorney, advised his client not to speak because Griffin is appealing his convictions. Vivo argued for a sentence of less than life without parole, saying that no one can predict his client’s behavior in the future and whether he would be a danger to society.
Griffin did not speak.
McLaughlin read an impact statement written by the victim. In it, the victim said she was afraid to go to sleep and tried to stay overnight somewhere whenever possible because she knew what awaited her in the morning, but she was never allowed to sleep over at a friend’s house on a school night.
“I never wanted to be there on school days because I knew what was coming the next morning,” the victim wrote. “I never got a good night’s sleep because I knew what was coming the next morning.”
Judge Christian praised the victim’s courage in testifying during the trial.
“She [the victim] squeezed that stress ball so tightly I thought it might explode,” Judge Christian said.