The Windsor Board of Education demanded one of their own resign after he was arrested in Florida, accused of traveling there to have sex with a 14-year-old girl.
On Tuesday night, the board held a special meeting to call for Christopher Watts to resign and voted unanimously to remove him from the finance committee.
Board members said that they cannot fire Watts because he is a publicly elected official, but they are disturbed by the allegations.
"The charges brought against Mr. Watts are extremely serious and are of legitimate concern to the Board and to the Windsor school community," board president Doreen Richardson said in a news release.
She said Watts never had unsupervised access to children in his role as a board member, and there is no allegation that he engaged in any misconduct in his service to the Board of Education, but the board wants him to resign.
"(O)n behalf of the Board, I am asking that Mr. Watts immediately resign his position on the Windsor Board of Education so that his continued service will not distract the Board or the public from our joint mission to promote the effective education of the children of Windsor,” Richardson wrote in the statement.
The 38-year-old husband and father, was arrested in Florida on Thursday night and charged with attempting to entice a minor to engage in sexual activity via the Internet.
Police said he connected with an undercover officer posing as the father of a 14-year-old girl in a chat room and thought he was arranging to have sex with the teen.
Using the screen name "luvpervymoms," Watts responded to a post in a chat room that said "dad has daughter" and told the undercover officer that it was a “big fantasy” of his to have sex with a 14 year-old, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
The undercover officer typed that he "shared his daughter with a select group of friends" and Watts made arrangements to travel to Florida for sex with the girl, the criminal complaint states.
"(I) gotta go down there (Florida) for a couple days to find a new truck that hasn't been killed by road salt" and "love to get into some fun while there," Watts typed, according to the complaint.
At one point, Watts sent a photo of himself and investigators said it matched the photo of the Watts on the Web site of his company, Precision Marketing LLC.
Watts traveled to Brevard County, Florida, rented a silver Mustang convertible and was arrested at his hotel, according to records from federal officials.
Watts told officials that he had a pattern of viewing videos and images of children in sexual acts, then would delete them from his computer and "backup" drives, officials said.
He said he canceled an account he used in chat-rooms before traveling to Florida, believes he has a good life, a family and a child and does not want to ruin it, so he decided to stop, according to court documents.
He went on to say he has a "hyper-sexual problem" and tries "to be good" but keeps "repeating old patterns. ... I just want to do what's right and stop hurting myself & my family," according to the court records.
"(T)his sounds terrible but I'm on the Board of Education in my town, again no interaction with children." Watts said, according to police.
Watts made his first court appearance on Friday. On that same day, Windsor police were at his house.
According to Watts’ biography on the Windsor Education Foundation Web site, he was elected to the board of education in 2005, had a career in radio, working as an editor for the Associated Press in Washington DC, and also worked as a press secretary for the House Democrats in Hartford.
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is investigating.
