Texas woman who gave 11-year-old relative bubble bath, dressed her up with skirt, blouse and makeup before prostituting her gets jailed for life
NEW BOSTON, TEXAS: A Texas woman who sold one of her young female relatives for a life of prostitution and drug addiction will be spending the rest of her life behind bars.
The victim, now in her 30s, described to a jury how, when she 11 or 12, her "favorite relative", 53-year-old Della Lou Griffin, gave her a bubble bath, painted her face with makeup and dressed her in a skirt and low-cut blouse before driving her to a motel room, where a 400-pound man named John Littleton raped her.
She said it all started earlier that same day when she and Griffin ran into Littleton while they were shopping in a local store.
She said she heard him say, "Well, she's about ready," to Griffin, and that the 53-year-old convinced her she would only be used as "bait" to lure cash out of him.
But then, she drove her to the motel, where Littleton was waiting, and they all went to to a liquor store in Texarkana, where they bought wine coolers, whiskey, and vodka.
After returning from the liquor store, she said Griffin collected some bills from Littleton and told her she was leaving to get ice and would be right back. She only came back the next day, after Littleton had raped her.
In the following weeks and months, she said Griffin gave her crack cocaine-laced marijuana, and that she ended up abusing drugs intravenously before she turned 16. She said Griffin told her she could get a lot of money for her virginity, and that Littleton preferred young girls.
While all this transpired in the 90s, Griffin only came to the attention of authorities in April 2018 after they searched Littleton's home, which was described as being "wretched with trash, filth, and human excrement," in connection to a human trafficking investigation.
In his massive collection of pornographic videos and magazines, investigators uncovered a video labeled Della where Littleton can be seen sexually assaulting the victim in multiple ways while Griffin gave her instructions on technique and told her to stop covering her breasts with her hands.
It was recorded in 1996 when she was 14. "He smelled bad, he was so huge, it was so gross," the victim testified during Griffin's trial.
She also testified that the 53-year-old later began selling her to other men and arranged for her to marry as a teen so authorities would stop trying to make her go to school.
Griffin was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for aggravated sexual assault of a child and 20 years each on four counts of sexual assault of a child this past week. The 202nd District Judge John Tidwell ordered the terms to run consecutively for a total life-plus-80-year sentence.
In addition to the maximum prison sentence for each of the five felony charges, she was also handed down the maximum fine for each count, which totaled to $50,000.
Littleton died in 2018 while free on bond on sexual assault charges. Charles Garton, his longtime roommate, is currently serving a 160-year sentence for sexually abusing a 12-year-old girl, while another one of his associates, Kenneth Nelson, is serving five life terms for human trafficking involving several other young girls.