News

Actions

Woman pretending to be teen boy charged with sex crimes

Posted at 2:06 PM, Sep 19, 2013
and last updated 2013-09-20 08:06:11-04

HAMPTON, Va. (WTVR) -- A Hampton woman, who investigators said pretended to be a teenage boy, is charged with a variety of crimes. Now police want to know if there are other victims yet to come forward.

Deputies were called to the woods along Point Comfort Loop Monday afternoon after people reported hearing a person in distress. There they found a 15-year-old girl and a person who said they were a 15-year-old boy named Seth Walker.

Deputies determined Walker was in fact not a boy.

"This person is actually Stephanie Griffith, who is a 21-year-old female," York-Poquoson Sheriff’s Office Lt. Dennis Ivey, Jr. wrote in a media advisory. "It was also determined that Griffith had been having consensual sexual contact with the 15-year-old female in the woods and on several other occasions."

Griffith, of Clover Street in Hampton, is charged with seven counts of sexual battery, one count of crimes against nature and one count of piercing a minor.

“A citizen heard an unusual sound coming from the woods and called us,” Sheriff Danny Diggs told WTKR.com. “The scream was actually an attempted [belly button] piercing, that was consensual.”

Police asked anyone with information about this crime to call 1-888-LOCK-U-UP.

“We think there’s a good possibility that she could have ensnared some other young people,” Sheriff Diggs said.