Woman Charged With Aiding Molestation

A Santa Paula grandmother is facing charges she allowed her former husband, a high school teacher, to molest two young girls on nine occasions in the last 13 months, authorities said.

Dianna Nice, 46, has pleaded not guilty to nine felony sex charges involving the preteen girls, said Sgt. Carlos Juarez of the Santa Paula Police Department.

“It’s unusual,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Audry Rohn. “We don’t hear about these things very often. I hope they don’t occur very often.”

Nice’s former husband--Santa Paula High School teacher Gilbert Wayne Wright, 63--was arrested in December and has pleaded not guilty to three child sex-abuse charges. Although divorced, Nice and Wright lived together in a Weston Court house.

A preliminary hearing for the pair is scheduled for 8:30 a.m. March 4.

The sex acts are alleged to have occurred between December 1996 and June 1997. Authorities learned of the allegations when one of the girls told a social worker in her hometown of Geary, Okla., Juarez said.

Nice, who is unemployed, is charged with aiding and abetting five counts of lewd and lascivious acts with a child and four counts of making a child available for molestation.

“She did not physically molest the girls, but we allege she did participate in the molestations,” Rohn said.

Juarez said the investigation remains open, and police are encouraging anyone who may have information to come forward.