A former Los Alamitos Unified School District bus driver was convicted Tuesday, Dec. 1, of 15 counts of lewd conduct with three girls between 2001 and 2004. In addition to charges of lewd conduct—the term used by the California criminal code to describe sexual assault upon a child—Terry Lee Shields, 54, was also convicted of kidnapping and taking pornographic pictures of his victims.
Shields, who will turn 55 on Dec. 16, is scheduled to be sentenced on Dec. 24. He could get 207 years to life. According to Farrah Emami, the DA’s spokesperson, Shields would not be eligible for parole until he had served 207 years—which is impossible.
According to the Orange County District Attorney’s Office, Shields, who will turn 55 on Dec. 16, met two of his victims through his job as a school bus driver for Los Alamitos Unified. He reportedly gained regular access to Jane Doe # 2, then age 11, and her sister Jane Doe #3, who was 4-and-1/2 when he began abusing the girls. According to Emami, the DA’s spokesperson, Shields abused Jane Doe #3 until she was 6.
Jane Doe #3 is developmentally disabled.
Shields’ third victim was an Anaheim school child identified as Jane Doe #1, who was 7 at the time. He lured her with a promise of a trip to Disneyland. He assaulted her and took explicit pictures of her—something he apparently did with all three of his known victims.
The crimes against the sisters Jane Doe # 2 and Jane Doe # 3 apparently occurred between November 2000 and December 2003.
Shields was arrested on Oct. 4, 2006 on unrelated child pornography charges. At the time, first time possession of child pornography was a misdemeanor.
On Oct. 4, 2006, Shields was in a Bellflower cyber café, viewing images of crimes against children in full view of the public. That is what child pornography is—a visual recording of the violation of a child.
According to the most recent DA’s Office statement on the case, a café employee flagged down a passing police officer to alert law enforcement about Shields, who was arrested at the scene. Other accounts have said customers contacted law enforcement.
In either case, Shields was found to be in possession of dozens of computer files depicting child pornography.
According to the Orange County DA’s Office, further investigation by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and a federal task force called SAFE, led to the identification of the three known victims.
According to the National Association to Protect Children, roughly one in three child pornography investigations results in the identification of local victims.
Shields has been in custody in the Orange County Jail since his Nov. 14, 2006 arrest on the charges stemming from his crimes against all three known victims. Bail was set at $2 million.
According to the Orange County Sheriff’s Department Web site, Shields is a white adult male, 6 feet tall, weighs 350 pounds, with brown hair and hazel eyes.
According to the DA’s office, Shields used to drive a 2002 burgundy Kia.
