Army Maj. Jonathan Batt was convicted Monday, June 23, 2025, by a military jury of raping or assaulting eight of 15 women who had accused the Ranger of forcing himself upon them, service officials said. (U.S. Army)

A military jury on Monday convicted Maj. Jonathan Batt of raping or assaulting eight of 15 women who had accused the Army Ranger of forcing himself upon them, service officials said.

The military jury of four colonels and four lieutenant colonels found Batt guilty 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, said Michelle McCaskill, the spokeswoman for the Army’s Office of Special Trial Counsel, which prosecutes sex crimes.

Batt, 40, will face sentencing by the military judge, Col. Adam Kazin, after prosecutors and the soldier’s defense attorneys present their arguments for potential sentences beginning Tuesday at Fort Meade, Md., McCaskill said. The rape convictions carry a potential life sentence, according to the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

Prosecutors sought to portray Batt as a serial womanizer who met his victims via dating apps and attacked many on the houseboat on which he lived in Arlington, Va., while assigned to units in the Washington region. They argued he tied up some of the women without their consent and choked many of them – using his hands, a pillowcase, rope or his own shirt – until they were unconscious before violating them. They also accused him of biting them without consent.

The attacks occurred between late 2019 and early 2023, according to prosecutors.

Batt testified all the sexual encounters were consensual, according to The Washington Post. Some of the women returned for additional dates after the incidents they described as rapes, the soldier argued. He admitted to choking some of his accusers but testified they had “asked me for it” and “it was a thing that many women liked.”

“I’m not a rapist,” Batt said from the stand during the trial, according to the Post.

The Army initially charged Batt in October with more than 70 crimes against 20 women, including 14 rapes. Five of the women declined to participate in the legal process, forcing prosecutors to drop several charges.

Prosecutors tried Batt on 43 charges including six accusations of rape, 10 of sexual assault and seven of aggravated assault against 15 women who testified during the trial. Fourteen of the women were civilians with no military affiliation and one was an active-duty soldier.

The case first came to light when an accuser reported to police in Alexandria, Va., that she was assaulted by Batt after meeting him through a dating app, according to the source close to the case. That accuser – a transgender woman from Philadelphia – declined to press charges at the time, but Alexandria police launched an initial probe and eventually turned the case over to the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division, whose agents uncovered additional accusers and built the case against Batt, the source said.

The transgender accuser at trial testified she had not disclosed to Batt that she was a trans woman but told him that she did not want to have sex after a recent surgery related to her transition.

Nonetheless, she said Batt choked her and assaulted her, according to The Washington Post.

“He was very forceful,” the woman testified. “I could feel myself not able to breathe. … I was pleading with him. I didn’t want to have sex.”

Other women reported similar behavior from Batt after meeting him. One accuser testified she had agreed to have sex with him in 2022, but she did not consent to being slapped and choked with a pillowcase, the Post reported. That accuser testified she met up again a second time with Batt to give him “another chance,” but he slapped and choked her again.

Batt is a 2007 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y. He commissioned as an infantry officer and he has served with the 82nd Airborne Division, the 5th Ranger Training Brigade, the 3rd Infantry Division, the 75th Ranger Regiment and the 3rd Infantry Regiment, according to service records. He has served at least four combat tours in Afghanistan, and he most recently was assigned to the Defense Department’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center in northern Virginia’s Crystal City.

While the conviction marks a “critical victory for survivors,” it also raises questions about how Batt’s actions went unreported for so long, according to Protect Our Defenders, a human rights group focused on ending military sexual assault.

Josh Connolly, the senior vice president for Protect Our Defenders, said Batt is only facing justice because “of the bravery of the victims” who agreed to testify against him.

While accusers in the military or military family members receive victim’s advocate services from the military, civilian accusers do not have rights to those services under the law. Protect Our Defenders provided such services pro bono to several of Batt’s accusers and has advocated for Congress to update the law to provide such services to all victims of service members.

“This conviction is a step in the right direction and proof that justice is possible when survivors are empowered and advocacy organizations step in to fill the void,” Connolly said. “It also forces us to confront hard truths, like how someone accused of assaulting more than a dozen victims was able to keep serving and move freely between posts without intervention or accountability.”