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A former U.S. Army private stationed at Fort Belvoir was sentenced Friday to 15 years in prison for twice abusing his infant daughter, who is now permanently disabled, and raping the child’s mother.
Austin Blair Johnson, 35, pleaded guilty earlier this year to two counts of assault resulting in serious bodily injury and one count of sexual abuse in connection with the crimes in 2012 and 2013, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Alexandria said in a news release.
The 15-year sentence handed down Friday is to be served consecutively to a 15-year sentence Johnson is serving for injuring his 6-week-old son with his new wife in Montana in 2017.
Fort Belvoir case
According to court documents, on June 24, 2012, Johnson, then an active duty soldier residing on Fort Belvoir, was watching his infant daughter, who was born prematurely 15 days earlier.
The baby was crying, “so Johnson picked her up and carried her, but she continued to cry,” the release said. While holding the baby in front of him with one hand under each of her arms, Johnson “rapidly and forcefully shook” the victim multiple times before letting go of her, causing her to flip and land on her head, the release said.
Johnson then picked up the baby and ran with her upstairs to a bedroom where he woke his then-wife. According to court documents, Johnson falsely told her he had accidentally dropped the baby, and had successfully broken her fall with his foot.
The couple took the baby to the Fort Belvoir Community Hospital ER, where she presented with a fever, bruising on her head and shoulder and blood coming out of her mouth, according to the release.
A CT scan conducted there revealed the baby’s skull had been fractured. She was transferred later to the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit at Walter Reed Medical Center, where she was diagnosed with extensive injuries and remained hospitalized for the next 10 days.
The day she was discharged, the baby was again left in Johnson’s care while his wife was out and he again “rapidly and forcefully shook” her before dropping her, the release said. The baby was 26 days old at the time.
The next morning, the infant’s mother took her for a follow-up appointment with a pediatrician at Fort Belvoir Community Hospital, where the baby began having seizures and was sent to the ER.
She was later transferred later to the PICU at Children’s National Medical Center, where doctors discovered myriad injuries, including a second skull fracture, and identified extensive brain damage, the release said.
When she was discharged on July 20, 2012, the baby was placed in the custody of Child Protective Services, where she remained for approximately 14 months until she was returned to the custody of Johnson and her mother.
Two days later, shortly after her third birthday, she underwent a hemispherectomy “during which the entire left side of her brain was removed in an effort to control her irrepressible seizures,” the release said.
The victim is now legally blind, non-verbal and the entire right side of her body is paralyzed, prosecutors said. Cognitively, she functions at the level of a mature infant.
As part of his sentence in the case, Johnson was ordered to pay over $1.1 million in restitution.
In addition to his assaults on the baby, Johnson was convicted of sexually assaulting the baby’s mother in 2013 at their home on Fort Belvoir.
“After she rebuffed Johnson’s requests to be intimate with her, Johnson proceeded without her consent. [The victim] protested and tried to hit Johnson to get him to stop, which he eventually did,” the release said.
Johnson was never court-martialed or criminally charged in the assaults.
Montana case
Five years later, Johnson was living in Montana with his new wife and 6-week-old son when she went upstairs to try on jeans, asking Johnson to watch the baby for a few minutes, according to an article in Stars and Stripes.
She came back down to find the baby limp and unresponsive. He, too, suffered permanent brain damage from violent shaking.
Johnson was quickly arrested and sentenced in the crime on March 1, 2018.
The boy’s mother told prosecutors she didn’t know about Johnson’s past abuse of his first child.
It was unclear Friday if the military ever investigated Johnson or why it took over a decade for federal prosecutors to take up the case. Johnson was indicted in July 2024 and pleaded guilty in May in connection to the assaults on his wife and daughter.
The Army Criminal Investigative Division did not immediately return a request for comment Friday.
“Military medical protocol requires hospital workers to notify criminal investigators and others if they even suspect child abuse,” Stars and Stripes wrote. “It’s unclear whether that happened but what is known is that the Army never court-martialed Johnson. It took nearly 13 years for Johnson’s previous abuse to catch up with him.”
