Bicycle moto-cross (BMX) coach Mandak Kohn Griffin was to be arraigned today on charges of sexually assaulting three boys, ages 7 to 9, from his Cypress neighborhood and exchanging thousands of child pornography images over the Internet, authorities said.
The 30-year-old Cypress resident could get up to 85 years in state prison if convicted of the laundry list of counts the Orange County District Attorney's office (OCDA) has brought against him. Griffin's arraignment was scheduled to begin this morning in Westminster.
Griffin is accused, beginning in 2000, of inviting neighborhood boys to his home to look at pornographic movies and magazines. He allegedly instructed a 9-year-old boy to take a publication into a bathroom, where Griffin is accused of having rubbed the boy's penis. The boy did not tell anyone what had happened at the time.
The BMX coach is also accused of inviting over to his home an 8-year-old relative of a female Griffin was seeing romantically. Griffin is accused of telling the boy to get out of his pool and, while the kid dried himself off, rubbing his penis. That boy also did not tell anyone about the incident at the time.
Griffin allegedly invited over to his home several times a 7-year-old boy related to a female friend. The boy and Griffin allegedly orally copulated one another on one occasion and, in a separate instance, taking a pornographic photo of the boy.
The crimes against the three boys are alleged to have happened through 2002. Last year, the FBI alerted the Orange County Sexual Assault Felony Enforcement (OC SAFE) Team that Griffin was on their radar. Between August 2010 and January 2011, Griffin is accused of exchanging numerous images of child pornography on an Internet site. The OC SAFE—a multi-agency federal task force that includes the OCDA's investigative arm, the FBI, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Orange County Sheriff's Department—combats sex crimes against children over the Internet.
It was during the child pornography investigation that the Cypress Police Department discovered the three sex assault victims from years ago. The OCDA says digital evidence helped point them to Griffin, and there are fears that other young victims may be out there. Contact Supervising District Attorney Investigator Randy Litwin at 714.347.8794 if you know anything.
Tips could start rolling in before Nagy Morcos, the deputy district attorney from the Sexual Assault Unit that is prosecuting the case, is done reading to the judge the charges filed against Griffin: one felony count each of sodomy with a child under 10, one felony count of oral copulation of a child under 10, one felony count of possession and control of child pornography, and one felony count of using a minor for production of obscene matter. Griffin also faces sentencing enhancement allegations for sexual assault of multiple victims and substantial sexual conduct with a child for the assault alleged against the 9-year-old boy.
Morcos was also set to ask the judge that Griffin be held in lieu of $1 million bail.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.