VENTURA : Mom Gets Probation in Child-Stealing Case

A Ventura mother of two who fled to Paris rather than give up her children was granted probation Friday.

A probation report and a prosecutor had recommended a one-year jail term for 32-year-old Nikki Lynn Ruberoe.

But Superior Court Judge James McNally cited Ruberoe’s lack of criminal history and the fact that the defendant returned the children safely to their father, who is the custodial parent.

The judge suspended a six-month prison term. Ruberoe had pleaded guilty to child stealing, violating a custody agreement, conspiracy and helping her fugitive husband flee the country.

She was granted temporary custody of her two children last summer. But when her current husband was convicted of multiple counts of child molestation, she took the children out of the country rather than return them to their biological father.

She later admitted to taking the children, ages 10 and 13, to France and then arranging for their return after authorities began looking for them. She was arrested last September in Sri Lanka, where she had gone to meet her fugitive husband, 28-year-old Channa Ruberoe, a Sri Lankan national. Ventura County authorities are trying to extradite the husband to sentence him on child molestation charges.

“I think on some level, the defendant loves her children, but she puts herself first,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Mandee Sanderson told the judge.

But Nikki Ruberoe’s attorney, Steve Pell, said his client was negatively influenced by her husband, whom Pell termed “a bum, a flim-flam artist.”