the New York Times published<\/a> a bombshell expos\u00e9 that poked holes in Griffin\u2019s account, and brought to light that Griffin and her husband, hedge fund billionaire John Griffin, invest in a company that backs MDMA. <\/p>\nThe Food and Drug Administration formally declined to approve the drug for therapeutic use in August 2024. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe New York Times interviewed dozens of people from Amarillo, the publishing industry and the medical and MDMA communities, along with Texas authorities, and reviewed the book proposal Ms. Griffin used to pitch her project to publishing houses,\u201d the outlet wrote.<\/p>\n
Among those interviews was Griffin\u2019s classmate from more than 35 years prior, who told the outlet that she had been sexually assaulted by a different teacher in the same locations that Griffin detailed, including at the same middle-school dance.<\/p>\n
The former classmate filed her own lawsuit against Griffin in March, and used the name Jane Doe to protect her privacy. In the suit, she claims that she was contacted by someone posing as a talent agent or producer and tricked into offering \u201cprivate details of her life\u201d over the phone in 2022. <\/p>\n
According to the former classmate, she and Griffin were classmates and belonged to the same church youth group in the late 1980s. She alleged that at a \u201cSadie Hawkins\u201d dance, she was sexually assaulted in a closet by one of the school\u2019s teachers and that she was wearing a dress she\u2019d borrowed from Griffin during the assault. She claims she asked for forgiveness while at the church youth group meeting with Griffin in attendance, and returned the dress to Griffin with stains. <\/p>\n
The March filing further stated that, a month later, she was sexually assaulted by the same schoolteacher, this time in the bathroom. \u201cThis assault was more violent, and during the incident the teacher put his boot on her back, stuffed a bandanna in her mouth, which later caught on her braces, slammed her against the wall, and whipped her with a belt,\u201d reads the suit, which noted that she was 12 at the time, living in a group home, and was too scared to report the assaults. <\/p>\n
The former classmate claims that \u201cthe details of these two sexual assaults which she was the victim of were later converted by Griffin for use in the memoir \u2018The Tell.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n
According to Griffin\u2019s dueling lawsuit, every element of her former classmate\u2019s account is false, and the accusation that Griffin \u201cstole the rape of another woman and built a bestseller on it\u201d is fabricated. <\/p>\n
Griffin\u2019s suit claims that her former classmate hadn\u2019t detailed the story as her own until the New York Times sent her a copy of \u201cThe Tell,\u201d in search of finding out who the real person behind the memoir\u2019s character \u201cClaudia\u201d was. Griffin further took aim at the New York Times, alleging the outlet deemed the story \u201ctoo good to scrutinize.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018The Tell\u2019 recounts Mrs. Griffin\u2019s own abuse: memories she recorded in writing and reported to the police before [her former classmate] claims they were stolen,\u201d reads the June filing. <\/p>\n
New York Times spokesperson Danielle Rhoades Ha said in an email to the Associated Press that Griffin\u2019s lawsuit \u201crepeatedly misrepresents The New York Times story and its reporting.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOur story was about a publishing phenomenon, the reliability of memories recovered while under the influence of MDMA and the impact of a bestselling memoir on the author\u2019s hometown,\u201d she said. \u201cOur reporters\u2019 only agenda was to pursue the facts, including corroboration of accounts from all sources.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Author and venture capitalist Amy Griffin is suing the woman who accused her of stealing her stories of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":366945,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[148819,2598,148822,148823,63683,48,52,51,1846,47,50,49,2959,128430,18624,44271,148821,8272,11469,148820,1557],"class_list":["post-366944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-amy-griffin","tag-assault","tag-bestseller","tag-different-teacher","tag-former-classmate","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-lawsuit","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-march","tag-mdma","tag-memoir","tag-new-york-times","tag-rape-story","tag-secret","tag-suit","tag-tell","tag-woman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=366944"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366944\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/366945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=366944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=366944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=366944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Oprah](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/1781860333_251_.jpeg\")
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