INDECENT LIBERTIES

Child Sex Crime Cases Are Up Tenfold at Fort Bragg

What exactly is a crime against nature? How about exhibiting a harmful live performance to children?

These rarely prosecuted, morally abhorrent offenses were among the thirty-four child sex crime charges filed in October 2023 against a special operations soldier named Shawn Michael Lima, a sergeant first class in the United States Army at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Lima, 36, a civil affairs team sergeant in the 95th Civil Affairs Brigade was accused of forcing three children, two girls and a boy, to engage in sex acts with one another, and of sexually assaulting one of the girls.

PHOTO: SERGEANT FIRST CLASS SHAWN MICHAEL LIMA

I regret to report that Lima’s case was not an isolated occurrence. He was just one of at least twenty-six Fort Bragg soldiers to be charged, convicted, or sentenced for statutory rape, sexual assault of a minor, taking indecent liberties with a child, or child pornography in the last four years. By comparison, searches of a LexisNexis news archive, using the same …