Sentenced: ‘These Babies Need Their Justice’: Former Soldier Convicted After Severely Disabling 2 Infants

[Sugar Cookie]

September 12, 2025

A former U.S. Army private was sentenced today to 15 years in prison for two counts of assault resulting in serious bodily injury and one count of sexual abuse. This sentence is to be served consecutively to a 15-year sentence he is currently serving for assault on an infant in violation of Montana law.

According to court documents, on June 24, 2012, Austin Blair Johnson, an active duty soldier residing on Fort Belvoir, was watching his infant daughter, identified as Minor Victim 1 (MV1), who was born prematurely only 15 days earlier. MV1 was crying, so Johnson picked her up and carried her, but she continued to cry. While holding MV1 in front of him with one hand under each of her arms, Johnson rapidly and forcefully shook MV1 multiple times before letting go of her, causing her to flip and land on her head.

Johnson then picked up MV1 and ran with her upstairs to a bedroom where he woke MV1’s mother, identified as Adult Victim 1 (AV1). Johnson falsely told AV1 that he had accidentally dropped MV1 and that he had successfully broken her fall with his foot. AV1 and Johnson took MV1 to the Fort Belvoir Community Hospital emergency room where she presented with a fever, bruising on her head and shoulder, and blood coming out of her mouth. A CT scan conducted there revealed that MV1’s skull had been fractured. MV1 was transferred later to the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) at Walter Reed Medical Center. MV1 was diagnosed with extensive injuries and remained hospitalized at Walter Reed for the next 10 days.

The day she was discharged, MV1 was left in Johnson’s care while AV1 was out. Johnson again rapidly and forcefully shook MV1 and dropped her. MV1 was 26 days old. The following morning, AV1 took MV1 to a previously scheduled follow-up appointment with a pediatrician at Fort Belvoir Community Hospital. At the appointment, MV1 began having seizures and was sent directly to the emergency room. MV1 was 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.

When she was finally discharged on July 20, 2012, MV1 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 AV1. On June 22, 2015, shortly after her third birthday, MV1 was forced to undergo a hemispherectomy during which the entire left side of her brain was removed in an effort to control her irrepressible seizures.

MV1 is now legally blind, non-verbal, and the entire right side of her body is paralyzed. Cognitively, MV1 functions at the level of a mature infant. As part of his sentence, Johnson was ordered to pay over $1.1 million in restitution.

In addition to his assaults on MV1, in 2013, at their residence on Fort Belvoir, after AV1 had rebuffed Johnson’s requests to be intimate with her, Johnson proceeded without her consent. AV1 protested and tried to hit Johnson to get him to stop, which he eventually did.

https://www.justice.gov/usao-edva/pr/former-fort-belvoir-soldier-sentenced-15-years-prison-assaulting-and-permanently

Brittany Ballenger had gone upstairs with her stepmom to try on a pair of jeans for an upcoming family gathering.

It was July 1, 2017, five weeks after Ballenger gave birth to her first child, Blair, in Butte, Mont. She asked her then-husband, former U.S. soldier Austin Blair Johnson, to watch their sleeping son.

Less than 10 minutes later, Ballenger heard “the strangest noise,” which she described as a faint whine coming from Blair. She rushed downstairs.


“Is this normal for Blair?” Johnson asked.

“What do you mean, ‘Is this normal for Blair?’ ” an alarmed Ballenger said.

“He handed Blair to me,” Ballenger recalled in a phone interview last week from her home in Helena, Mont.“He was not responding at all. His eyes were rolled back and his whole body was limp.


”Less than a year later, Johnson was sentenced to 15 years in prison for shaking his infant son and causing severe brain injuries.

Judge Kurt Krueger told Johnson he had given his child “a life sentence,” and Ballenger the same sentence for taking away “the hopes and dreams” she had for her son living a normal life, the Montana Standard reported after the March 1, 2018, sentencing hearing in Butte-Silver Bow District Court.

What the court and Ballenger didn’t know then was that Johnson, 27 at the time, had done this twice before, to his first child from a previous marriage.

While on active duty at Fort Belvoir, Va., Johnson had violently shaken and dropped his daughter when she was 16 days old. He did it again 10 days later.

Military medical protocol requires hospital workers to notify criminal investigators and others if they even suspect child abuse. 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.

He pleaded guilty to two counts of assault resulting in serious bodily injury, admitting in federal court on May 30 in Virginia to abusing his infant daughter in 2012 while an Army private living on post at Fort Belvoir, according to court documents and a Justice Department statement.

Ballenger’s son, Blair, is now 8 years old. She cares for him full time. Doctors initially told her he would be a vegetable, she said.

“To this day, he has proven everybody wrong,” she said.

He can talk and is able to walk with ankle braces up to his knees, Ballenger said. Like his half-sister, he’s fed through a tube, she said. He has autism, cerebral palsy, epilepsy and Tourette’s syndrome. He learns functional life skills in a special education classroom at school.

Blair was flown to the children’s hospital in Salt Lake City due to his injuries inflicted by Johnson.

He had brain trauma, a broken ankle and tailbone, and five broken ribs that appeared to be from prior abuse, Ballenger said.

When doctors showed her an MRI of Blair’s brain, they said white indicates damage.“Every single part of his brain had white on it,” she said.

Doctors told her plainly that he had been abused.

While Blair was still hospitalized in Salt Lake City, Johnson’s ex-wife reached out to Ballenger to offer support and then revealed that she and other family members had suspected Johnson of prior abuse.

“They all figured that Austin did this” to his daughter, Ballenger said, “because her injuries were just like Blair’s.”

“When Blair’s case was done,” she said, the ex-wife “said she was going to fight tooth and nail” to get her daughter’s case opened in Virginia.

Ballenger said that before he was arrested, Johnson told her that he had also hurt his daughter but got her back because he “took the parenting classes and did everything they asked of (him).”

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‘These babies need their justice’: Former soldier convicted after severely disabling two infants

Austin Blair Johnson was sentenced in 2018 to 15 years in prison for shaking his infant son and causing severe brain injuries. What the court didn’t know was that Johnson, 27 at the time, had done this twice before, to his first child from a previous marriage.

www.stripes.com

 

[cubby]

He may have taken the classes but he did not learn anything, at this point he is not capable of tending to a rock. Why oh Why did they keep giving these poor babies back to him???? Three times he had the opportunity to change and he kept doing it again.

 

[Busy Bee]

None of that makes any logical sense at all!! This is someone who should be sterilized and kept in prison! He’s not able to live in society! The “parenting classes “ were of no use to him! These child care agencies are just far too trusting! He took their lives away! Glad to see they charged him financially too!