SCOTT AIR FORCE BASE, Ill.\u00a0\u2014 An Air Force technical sergeant who fled Illinois earlier this year while awaiting a court-martial will spend 25 years in prison after pleading guilty Monday to child sexual assault charges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
David Lawrence\u00a0Helm\u00a0also pleaded guilty to a desertion charge and to illegally recording the private area of a woman. In addition to the prison term,\u00a0Helm\u00a0was dishonorably discharged and forfeited all pay and allowances.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Helm\u00a0entered the guilty pleas at the start of his court-martial as part of a plea agreement with prosecutors, who dropped some of the charges against him, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Helm\u00a0was accused of sexually assaulting a girl between the ages of 12 and 16 at several locations in 2013 and 2014, including at southern Illinois’ Scott Air Force Base and in Tennessee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A statement read on behalf of the victim, who is now 15, indicated the rape left her feeling suicidal and unable to trust men, the Belleville News-Democrat reported.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“I had a knife to my wrist and I was going to work my way up my arm and I only stopped, because they opened the door,” the victim said in a statement read by Special Victim’s Council Capt. Amanda Snipes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Helm, 35, was scheduled for trial earlier this year. However, he went missing from Scott Air Force Base on May 29. He was declared a fugitive in early June and later arrested in Nevada.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A spokesman for the Nevada State Highway Patrol said\u00a0Helm\u00a0told a trooper that he visited Las Vegas, went skydiving and drove a high-performance race car as part of his “bucket list.”\u00a0Helm\u00a0was pulled over for having a broken tail light on his motorcycle. A search of his license plate turned up the fugitive arrest warrant.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An Air Force technical sergeant who fled Illinois earlier this year while awaiting a court-martial will spend 25 years in prison after pleading guilty Monday to child sexual assault charges.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":96189,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[15,88],"tags":[],"coauthors":[1432],"class_list":["post-99069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-your-military"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"CK2VXWTEYVBK3ECFPALOMI6GHM","arc_canonical_url":"\/2015\/08\/26\/sergeant-gets-25-years-on-assault-desertion-charges\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n