Jonathan Majors Won’t Go to Jail, Sentenced to Domestic Violence Treatment Program

On Monday, a New York judge sentenced Jonathan Majors to participate in a domestic violence treatment program and declined to give Majors any jail time. The sentencing comes about four months after a jury found Majors guilty of assaulting and harassing his ex-girlfriend Grace Jabbari in an incident from March 2023. Majors will complete a one-year “in person batterers” intervention program in Los Angeles and will be required to continue mental health counseling and adhere to a protective order to stay away from Jabbari. Should Majors not complete the program or violate any of the sentencing terms, he could face jail time, Deadline reports.

Majors and Jabbari were both present for the sentencing hearing. Prior to the sentencing, Jabbari read a victim impact statement. “He will do this again,” she said of Majors, according to Deadline. “This is a man who thinks he is above the law.” She also referenced Majors’ interviews and public commentary denying that he was abusive toward her: “Even after a jury found him guilty, he will not stop. He is not sorry. He has not accepted responsibility. … He will hurt other women.”

Just last week, Majors attempted to have his conviction overturned and asked to receive a new trial but was denied. Before that, in March, Jabbari filed a civil defamation suit against Majors for falsely claiming she lied about his abuse; the defamation suit includes new, extensive details about Majors’ abuse prior to his March 2023 arrest, including an incident in July 2022 when Jabbari says Majors pushed her into a shower and hit her head against the wall.

“When publicly confronted with Grace’s numerous allegations of abuse, Majors has called her a liar at every turn and very specifically claimed that he has never put his hands on a woman, with the goal of convincing the world that Grace is not a victim of domestic abuse but instead a crazy liar who should be treated as such,” the filing said.

In December, a New York jury found Majors guilty of reckless assault in the third degree and guilty of second-degree harassment against Jabbari, stemming from the aforementioned March 2023 incident in which Majors physically attacked Jabbari for looking at his phone. The altercation spilled out into the streets when they exited the vehicle. The jury found Majors not guilty of one other charge of intentional assault in the third degree and not guilty of the charge of aggravated harassment in the second degree.

The two assault charges and aggravated harassment charge relate to what happened between Majors and Jabbari while they were inside a car on the evening of March 25, while the second-degree harassment charge relates to an altercation between the two outside the vehicle. Majors, who has repeatedly denied being physically violent toward Jabbari, faced up to one year in jail as well as three years of probation, and a $1,000 fine.

Majors previously pleaded not guilty to all four of the charges against him. Over several weeks of grueling trial in December, jurors were shown photos of injuries Jabbari said she sustained from Majors, as well as incriminating text messages in which Majors appears to plead with her not to go to the hospital for injuries she may have received from him. The jury also reviewed video of Majors appearing to push Jabbari into a car on the night of the assault in March.

Jabbari testified that she struggled to get help throughout her abusive relationship with Majors because she feared getting him in trouble, as Majors warned her against trusting the police because of “what they would do to him as a Black man.” She told the jury, “I wanted to say: ‘Help me, please.’ But I felt scared to do that. … I loved him still, it was so confusing and I didn’t want to get him in trouble.” Meanwhile, Majors’ legal team claimed Jabbari was the aggressor in the relationship. Majors at one point filed a counter-claim that Jabbari is the one who assaulted him, resulting in her October arrest. But the Manhattan District Attorney’s office in October declined to prosecute Jabbari, determining there was “no prosecutorial merit” to Majors’ allegations.

Domestic violence experts expressed concern with Majors’ legal team’s strategy and treatment of Jabbari throughout the trial. Dr. Nicole Bedera, a sexual violence researcher, told Jezebel last year that Majors’ lawyers deployed “DARVO” (deny, attack, reverse victim and offender) against Jabbari: “It’s about bringing up things the victim has done to suggest the victim is not a perfect victim, they’re not a deserving victim, they’re not a good victim,” she said. “Sometimes they deny the abuse happened, and sometimes they just deny that it was wrong, because it was actually ‘self-defense.’”