![dscondras[1]](https://queerty-prodweb.s3.amazonaws.com/2009/10/dscondras1.jpg "dscondras[1]")
Not all teenage sex scandals are built the same. For instance, former Boston City Councilman David Scondras — Boston’s first openly gay one — who in 2007 plead guilty to charges stemming from trying to meet a 15-year-old boy from the Internet for sex, now says the police beat him and denied him medical attention after the arrest. So he’s suing!
In a federal lawsuit, Scondras would have you believe he’s the victim. Well, he says he was! After serving 18 months probation and having to register as a sex offender, Scondras, 63, now says his 2007 arrest by Lawrence police was a violent affair.
“Fearing for his safety and that he was about to be the subject of a potential ‘gay bashing,’ (Scondras) turned to try and run away,” the suit maintains, adding that Scondras was then violently tossed to the ground and struck in the head, breaking a tooth.
Lawrence Police Sgt. Ryan Shafer then allegedly shoved his gun into the Scondras’ head and, calling him a gay slur, threatened to kill him if he moved, according to the suit, filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Boston.
[…] The “boy” who police accused Scondras of arranging to meet was then 20-year-old hospital security guard Michael Fornesi, the son of Officer Fornesi. The guard encountered Scondras, using the screen name “Toppdadd,” in an AOL chatroom. Police alleged that Scondras, after being told he was chatting with a 15-year-old, exchanged sexually explicit IMs with the guard.
The younger Fornesi, also named in the suit, told of the chats to his friend, Sgt. Shafer, who instructed him to contact Scondras, an AIDS activist, to arrange a meeting.
Scondras’ attorney, William Korman, said he was “brutally beaten,” and needed brain surgery to relieve swelling on his brain.
Do we feel for the guy? Sure, police brutality is no small matter. But it’s pretty hard to drum up much sympathy for a guy who pleads guilty to trying to bed underage teens.
will clemens
Humiliating to have a public gay man go all pediophile for all the world to see.
Orpheus_lost
The problem with this commentary is that this shouldn’t be about whether or not we feel sorry for a pederast. The reality is that if the police are willing to beat this guy then what’s to stop them from beating you for smarting off during a traffic stop? Every charge of police brutality should be investigated thoroughly and any perpetrators should be tried and sent to prison if found guilty.
The concept that the police should be able to selectively beat prisoners, depending on what they are accused of, is a sign of either a lack of critical thinking or a totalitarian mindset.
Paul
Just so we are clear: Scondras is in an AOL chatroom when the 20-year old son of a police officer, pretending to be fifteen, initiates a conversation and exchanges explicit emails with him. The 20-year old tells his police officer friends, who arrest Scondras and beat the shit out of him and threaten to shoot him. Scondras – who has never been either accused,much less convicted, of any sexual contact with a minor – ends up as a registered sex offender and losing his career.
Don’t you think the guy suffered enough for that one email, without Queerty trying to turn this into the Salem witch trials?
Tallskin
Seems like this is more the actions of a fascist state than a democracy!
Tallskin
And the fact that you people cannot see this is very depressing
scott ny'er
i agree with Tallskin. And Orpheus.
not cool that he was trying to get with a 15 year oid. But that is another matter entirely.
Rob
I think it’s disgusting that Queerty is expressing sympathy for police officers who committed a brutal act of violence. Even if the victim is unsympathetic, he was (at least allegedly) beaten so hard he needed brain surgery. Nobody deserves that.
I also think it’s a shame that this matter is only being addressed in civil court. Police who beat people up should do hard time.
david Scondras
First I have never ‘enticed’ an underaged person in my life. In fact I have never had sex with anyone under 18. I am not a pederast, as attested to by the most sophisticated and hardworking pschologists who have examined me,whose analysis of me is public record, and I was never under any impression that the person in Lawrence was under 20-30 years old. You have left out or are unaware that : the accusing police officer was fired by the mayor of lawrence for being a drunk, slashing tires, violating a restraining order put on him by his girlfriend and that a plea bargain is not made because you are guilty but because you don’t have the resources to continue to fight. I could not continue to right for my reputation without bankrupting my family. I never broke any law. I was approached by a person who sent me a photo showing he was about 30, said he was 18, had a screen name identifying his age as twenty, was haging out in a gay site past midnight that requires you be 18 and would not be a place a pederast would belooking for a minor, gave street directions when I was lost that no 15 year old could have known about, spoke with me on the phone in a way that only a person extremely familiar with the gay subculture could have known about and who was obviously not a minor. you would have to be a complete idiot to think that the guy I was talking to on the phone and internet was a minior.. It is easy to demonize and castigate people without knowing what actually happened: However it is a matter of record that there was no underage person, I never thought that there was, and if you think comments about likeing daddy’s makes a person underage then comments about liking to wear nylons makes a guy a girl.
There is little that is worse than spending your life trying to be an honest honorable person who helped many others and then have your life destroyed by accusations from drunken homophobic cops that are not examined carefully and allowed to undermine a guy who has never been a pederast nor has any interest in sex with kids.
It is interesting that in our culture accusations seem adequate to prove a person is quilty of something.
In this case objectively: there was no undersage person involved at all so you have to make the argument that I ‘thought ‘ that there was. However it is obvious from police records that most of the conversations involved were not recorded or divulged which would have shown the person involved made it quite clear he was not a child.
Just the fact you cannot find the beginnings of any conversation between myself and anyone in this case should make you concerned that something is missing.
I am being trashed and turned from a person who has spent his entire life trying to help people and would never hurt anyone into a person that is a social pariah–not fair.
But not unfamiliar to a man who has lived through the bashings of being young and gay not that long ago in Boston. It is sad that a person like me can so easily be demonized by people who are so transparently lying.
justiceontherocks
I don’t care of he eventually pled guilty to the worst crime I can think of (playing Davey Wavey videos). Nothing about that excuses or justifies the police using him like a pinata. I hope justice will be served.
calumet street
@justiceontherocks: @david Scondras: @David Scondras: you are in denial you once were a really good city councilor but in 1991 you changed and you dodged your constituents when you were confronted with tough questions about excise tax records for automobiles! well David when you lost your city council seat in 1993 election i was one of the people who voted against you! you lost by 17 votes i believe. and ITFELT GOOD VOTING YOU OUT!. now you run up to Lawrence for what you thought was a sexual encounter with a fifteen year old! i am glad the cops beat the shit out of you! in fact they should have tazerd you sorry ass! by the way does Gary dotterman still get pedophile pictures like he did back in the late 1980s when his name was on a list and city councilor Dapper O’neil named that freak as one! and hey what ever happened to that bitch Shelia! and her husband who was fucking native girls down in Nicaragua! oh and by the way never tell a straight man you hate wearing a condom. my version of sex is very different that yours you degenerate!