OSAN AIR BASE, South Korea — A 19-year-old Air Force security policeman was sentenced to a bad-conduct discharge Friday after pleading guilty to sexually assaulting a female airman while she slept in a barracks.
Airman 1st Class Shimel W. Jackson of the 51st Security Forces Squadron also was sentenced to 10 months in prison, forfeiture of $750 pay per month for 10 months and reduction to the lowest military pay grade, E-1.
The judge in the special court-martial, Air Force Lt. Col. Dawn R. Eflein, sentenced Jackson on Friday afternoon after he pleaded guilty to charges of indecent assault, unlawful entry and making a false official statement. Eflein is circuit military judge for the Pacific Circuit, out of Yokota Air Base, Japan.
Prosecutors said Jackson agreed to plead guilty to the charges in exchange for being tried under the rules for a special rather than a general court-martial, which carries stiffer penalties upon conviction.
The charges stemmed from an early-morning incident Nov. 8 inside the 51st Security Forces Squadron barracks on the base, prosecutors said.
At about 2:30 a.m., Jackson entered the room of a fellow security policeman, who was two doors down using a friend’s computer, according to the prosecution. Sleeping in the airman’s bed was his girlfriend, a junior enlisted member of the 51st Communications Squadron.
“On that night, I woke up to Airman Jackson,” the woman told the court Friday. “He was my attacker. I woke up and I thought it was my boyfriend at first.”
But then, she said, “I recognized it wasn’t him so I pushed the person off. He sat up on the bed, hid his face and pulled up his shorts.”
She immediately told her boyfriend and an investigation ensued.
In an official statement Jackson later wrote for the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, he admitted entering the room but denied any wrongdoing while there. That statement led to the charge of making a false official statement.
In an unsworn statement before sentencing, the deep-voiced Jackson stood at a podium and asked Eflein for leniency.
“I know I can never take back what happened on eight November,” Jackson said. Looking over his left shoulder, to where the victim sat at the back of the courtroom, Jackson said, “Please believe me that I didn’t intend to hurt you or anyone that night.”
Jackson was to be transported Friday to the U.S. Army confinement facility at Camp Humphreys, prosecutors said.
