WRAL.com: Raleigh, Durham, Fayetteville

Log in to WRAL.com with one click using your favorite social network:

Register with WRAL.com using your favorite social network:

5:42 p.m. • 5-24-13

69°F

Weather Forecast for Raleigh

Sat: Clear.
- Hi: 72° F
Sun: Partly Cloudy.
- Hi: 75° F
Mon: Partly Cloudy.
- Hi: 80° F

Other Locations

7 Day Forecast

Posted: February 19

Former Bragg soldier gets 167-year sentence for sex assaults

Spc. Aaron Pernell, charged in Fort Bragg break-ins, sex assault

Site Search

FORT BRAGG, N.C. — A former Fort Bragg soldier has been sentenced to 167 years in prison after pleaded guilty to seven assaults on women.

Aaron Michael Pernell, 25, pleaded guilty Monday in a Hoke County courtroom.

The sentence is in addition to the 50 years he already is serving in a federal prison for a December 2009 sex assault of the wife of a deployed soldier in her Fort Bragg home.

The Army specialist was dishonorably discharged after his court-martial.

Pernell was accused of raping or trying to assault seven women away from the post in 2008 and 2009. Four of the cases were in Cumberland County, and the other three were in Hoke County.

Women told investigators that their attacker broke into their apartments in the middle of the night.

Pernell told Army investigators that "Jason," a voice inside his head, instructed him to attack women.

Family members have said that Pernell returned from a 15-month deployment to Iraq in 2006 as a changed, troubled man.

Get News Alerts to your Email & Cell Phone

18 Comments

WRAL.com welcomes your comments on this story. All comments are moderated prior to publication based on our posting guidelines. Please review them prior to posting and if your message is not approved.