Former selectman faces sex charges
SOUTHBOROUGH -- A well-known local politician in this affluent community west of Boston is accused of driving to a Rhode Island apartment complex this week to have sex with someone he thought was a 15-year-old girl he met in an Internet chat room.
William J. Christensen, 59, was arrested shortly after he drove his red Subaru Forester into the Evergreen Apartments parking lot in East Providence at 10:30 a.m. Wednesday, Captain Stephen J. Lynch of the Rhode Island State Police said. Christensen, who is married with two grown sons, was stunned when he was arrested, police said.
Last week, Christensen lost his bid for reelection to the Board of Selectmen in Southborough, on which he served for 12 years. The retired software engineer currently sits on several boards in the town.
''It's unbelievable. It's always somebody else, somewhere else, not someone you know in a small town like this," said Donna McDaniel, a former selectwoman who serves on the town's Affordable Housing Trust Committee with Christensen. ''It kind of makes your stomach queasy to think what this means for him and his family."
Most Southborough officials declined to comment, including Town Administrator Janice Conlin and Selectman William Boland, who won Christensen's seat by more than 700 votes.
State Police learned of Christensen last Friday, when an unidentified woman posing as a teenage girl informed them that a man with a
Detective Ken M. Bell of the Computer Crimes Unit, posing as a 15-year-old girl, began to chat with Christensen that day and engaged in up to six sexually explicit conversations.
Christensen, who has no prior record, was arraigned yesterday in Providence District Court on a charge of indecent solicitation of a child and released on $1,000 bail.
