An Army major has been convicted by a military jury of raping and sexually assaulting eight victims out of 15 who came forward in the trial.
Major Jonathan Batt was found guilty on Monday of two specifications of rape, five specifications of sexual assault, two specifications of aggravated assault by strangulation, seven specifications of assault consummated by a battery and one specification of obstructing justice, according to the news outlet Stars and Stripes. The jury consisted of four colonels and four lieutenant colonels.
Batt, 40, who was previously assigned to the Defense Department’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, in Arlington, Va., will be sentenced by the military judge, after arguments for potential sentences are made by prosecutors and the soldier’s defense attorneys starting Tuesday at Fort Meade, Md.
The rape convictions include a potential penalty of a life sentence.
Prosecutors said Batt met his victims on dating apps and attacked many on the houseboat on which he lived in Arlington, from late 2019 to early 2023. He tied up some of the victims without their consent and choked many of them until they were unconscious before violating them, the prosecutors argued.
Batt pleaded not guilty to all the charges and specifications and testified that all the sexual encounters were consensual, with some of the women returning for additional dates after the alleged rapes.
“I’m not a rapist,” Batt testified during the trial.
Batt was initially charged in October with 76 violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice against 20 women, including 14 rapes. However, five women declined to participate in the trial, forcing prosecutors to drop some charges, resulting in Batt being tried on 43 charges. Of the victims who participated in the trial, one was an active-duty soldier and 14 were civilians with no military affiliation.
The case began after one of Batt’s accusers, a transgender woman – a biological man claiming to be a woman – from Philadelphia reported him to Alexandria police after being assaulted by Batt, according to a Stars and Stripes source close to the case.
The accuser testified during Batt’s trial that he had not informed Batt that he was transgender but that he told Batt that he did not want to have sex after a recent surgery related to his transition. However, the Philadelphia man testified that Batt choked and assaulted him.
