Scottish mother facing vice charges tells of stress as family hounded

A SCOTTISH mother facing vice charges has spoken on US television from behind bars and told how the publicity surrounding her arrest has torn her family apart.

Speaking during a tearful interview from prison, Anna Gristina admitted she has had it relatively easy in Rikers Island because she is shielded from the publicity surrounding her case.

But the mother-of-four claimed the investigation and global media interest is taking a heavy toll on her husband and children.

In an interview with NBC’s Today show she said: “For my family I think it is just devastating. I have no communication with anybody.

“My husband is having a really hard time holding it together. I think it’s my family who suffer, because I’m able to at least hide in here from it all.

“My children, they get followed by the press. My husband almost got run off the road yesterday by press.”

Speaking with a slight Scottish accent, she said: “My son knows I’m in jail. After two months he came to see me here and he cried the whole time and begged to stay with me.”

Gristina, originally from Kirkliston, near Edinburgh, described the terror of being arrested on a New York street on 22 February.

She was taken to a government building in Manhattan and interviewed by investigators.

Gristina told the TV station’s Matt Lauer: “I thought I was being abducted because they didn’t look like police. I screamed on the street for people to please call 911 because I had no idea. You know, I’m walking down the street, and I’m being pulled off the street.

“It started off very nice, very passive. To the best of my recollection they asked me about five very prominent people.

“I have nothing to give them – that is why I am still here.”

Gristina was accused of running a high-end brothel from an upper East Side apartment building and charged with one count of promoting prostitution. She has been jailed ever since.

She came a step closer to freedom this week when an appellate court found that her $2 million (£1.28m) bond or $1m cash bail was unjustifiably high and reduced it to $250,000 bond or $125,000 cash.

That means if Gristina can raise the lower amount and prove the money came from legal means, she could be free by the end of the week.

She would have to wear a monitoring bracelet as a condition of her release.

Sitting beside her lawyer, Norman Pattis, Gristina insisted that she ran a completely legal service to set up married men with dates.

She added: “I watched a show called The Millionaire Matchmaker. A friend of mine suggested I would be really good at it.

“So I looked into setting up the same thing but instead of single and seeking it was married and seeking.”

She denied running a vice ring out of a small apartment in the city. “We had a small apartment. We had kept a hold of it because my daughter had considered going to Columbia [University].”

She believes prosecutors plan to keep her behind bars until she gives them the information they are seeking.

The District Attorney refused to comment on the interview.