An Army Ranger was convicted Monday following a three-week trial on two rape charges and more than a dozen other assault charges by a military jury of six men and two women.
Maj. Jonathan Batt, 40, claimed the sexual encounters with 15 women who testified against him were consensual and that he was not a rapist, the Washington Post reported.
Batt was convicted on 20 charges involving eight women and acquitted on 18 counts involving seven women. The rape charges carry a maximum sentence of life without parole while each sexual assault charge carries a 30-year maximum sentence.
The jury weighed six rape charges, two aggravated assault by strangulation charges, 10 sexual assault and 16 assault and battery charges for a total of 38 total counts, the Post reported.
Batt met the women through online dating applications, through work or friends, prosecutors said, between 2020 and 2023, most in the Washington D.C. area.
“There’s a mix of emotions,” Ryan Guilds, a lawyer representing nine of the women who testified, told the Post. “Disappointment for those who didn’t get the justice they deserved, validation for many of them, that they were believed. … Though today was a good day, it doesn’t change the incredible amount of harm suffered by these victims.”
Batt was assigned to an artificial intelligence division of the Army in Arlington, Virginia, where he lived.
Todd South has written about crime, courts, government and the military for multiple publications since 2004 and was named a 2014 Pulitzer finalist for a co-written project on witness intimidation. Todd is a Marine veteran of the Iraq War.
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