Ex-Boston City Councilor Scondras nabbed in underage sex sting
By Laura Crimaldi
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
LAWRENCE - Former Boston City Councilor David Scondras (D) was busted in a Lawrence school parking lot before dawn Monday after showing up with lubricant and booze in hope of a tryst in the woods with a 15-year-old boy he’d met online, the authorities said.
The ‘‘boy” that Scondras, 60, of Cambridge allegedly drove some 30 miles to meet for sex turned out to be a 20-year-old Lawrence General Hospital security guard, police say. The guard said he’d received a series of lurid instant messages from the former five-term councilor seeking sex with a minor, and approached a cop for help in dealing with the messages, court and police records indicate.
‘‘You know a lot of people have prejudices against guys who like to have sex with children,” Scondras allegedly told the security guard during a cell phone conversation after the illicit underage rendezvous was set up, a police report says.
When Scondras, an AIDS activist and founder of the Cambridge-based Search For A Cure, pulled into the parking lot at the Day Charter School here he was greeted by Lawrence Police Sgt. Ryan E. Shafer, who helped the security guard set up the impromptu sting, according to the police report.
According to Shafer’s police report, Scondras initially exchanged sexually explicit IM’s with the guard, and after being told he was communicating with a willing 15-year-old, immediately sent the minor his cell phone number and began soliciting sex.
At Shafer’s direction, the guard called Scondras to offer direction to the school lot. During that conversation, the report says, Scondras told the guard, who used the pseudonym Josh, that he wanted to have unprotected sex with him ‘‘in the woods” and would bring along marijuana.
After Scondras arrived at the lot and identified himself to ‘‘Josh,” Shafer moved in for the arrest. In his report, he said Scondras resisted arrest and tried to flee.
‘‘As I was attempting to handcuff the suspect’s right hand he pulled it in front of him and pushed me off,” Shafer wrote, adding that Scondras next grabbed the officer’s cell phone and tried to run. He was subdued.
In Scondras’ car, Shafer said, were four blue packages of ‘‘Wet” lubricant and an open bottle containing a ‘‘red alcohol substance.”
Scondras is charged with enticement of a child under the age of 16, selling or delivering alcohol to a person under 21, assault and battery on a police officer, resisting arrest and larceny under $250, court records show.
He is free on $1,500 bail following his arraignment this morning in Lawrence District Court and will be back before a judge on Nov. 16, prosecutors said.
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