VENTURA : Mother Accused of Abduction Returned

A woman accused of abducting her two children in July and fleeing to Europe was returned to Ventura County on Wednesday, authorities said.

Niki Lynn Ruberoe, 33, allegedly took her 13-year-old daughter and 10-year-old son to Paris before arranging for them to be returned to their biological father in Virginia last month, authorities said.

The mother abducted the children after being awarded custody for the summer, Special Assistant Dist. Atty. Donald C. Coleman said.

Ruberoe had lost custody earlier in the year when her husband, the children’s stepfather, was convicted of molesting one of them, Coleman said.

The husband, 28-year-old Channa Ruberoe, was convicted in July of molesting the girl three years earlier.

“I’ve never seen a case like this,” said Coleman, a 15-year prosecutor. “I’ve had cases where the mother of molest victims continued to take her husband’s side. But never when they leave the country with the children like this.”

Investigators discovered Niki Lynn Ruberoe in Sri Lanka in September and began the deportation proceedings that led to her return to Ventura Wednesday.

Extradition proceedings are under way against her husband, a citizen of Sri Lanka, Coleman said.

Two days after Channa Ruberoe’s conviction on three counts of child molestation in July, he was released from jail on $75,000 bail, Coleman said. He apparently left the country shortly thereafter.

Coleman said Niki Lynn Ruberoe was able to flee the country with the children because she seemed remorseful about the molestation and was given temporary custody for the summer.

“She was verbalizing the right things, and she fooled some people,” he said.

She is scheduled to be arraigned Friday.