School Trustee’s Wife Testifies in Abuse Trial

Recanting her claims of domestic abuse, the wife of Oxnard Elementary School District trustee Ray Gonzales told a jury Monday that she lied about her husband shoving her into a glass window because she was having an affair and feared losing her children during a nasty divorce.

“I had to cover myself,” Nicole Allen-Gonzales testified during the first day of testimony in her husband’s misdemeanor battery trial. “I was going to make sure I had a good story to tell.”

But her testimony doesn’t jibe with what police and prosecutors say happened.

Ray Gonzales, 42, is accused of pushing his wife during an argument on Feb. 7 during which she fell backward, hit her arm on a broken window and suffered two cuts that required six stitches.

Despite Allen-Gonzales’ urgings to drop the case, prosecutors filed a misdemeanor charge against her husband and launched their case Monday in Ventura County Superior Court.

During opening statements, Deputy Dist. Atty. Wendy McFarlane told jurors that Allen-Gonzales, 29, would change her story from what she had previously told police. But she said the truth would become clear through the testimony of other witnesses.

McFarlane said the case “is about control, intimidation and abuse.”

But defense attorney Willard Wiksell told jurors the case is only about what actually happened Feb. 7. He said the evidence will show the couple argued and Nicole accidentally hurt herself on broken glass.

During her testimony, Allen-Gonzales maintained that the accident was her fault. She told the jury she lied to her relatives and a doctor because she was angry at her husband.

On March 8, she also lied to police who responded after her husband caught her in a “compromising situation” with another man, she said. Gonzales had called 911 upon finding the man in his home.

Although the couple are now separated--Allen-Gonzales filed for divorce in April--she told the jury that she still loves her husband. That testimony prompted Ray Gonzales to break into tears.

One of the couple’s three children, 9 1/2-year-old daughter Georgette, was among a dozen witnesses who took the stand Monday, offering intimate and painful glimpses into the family’s personal life.

Carrying a stuffed bear up to the witness stand, Georgette, an Oxnard fifth-grader, told jurors she never heard her father hit or threaten her mother. She said she didn’t see the alleged Feb. 7 shoving incident.

But in later testimony, a district attorney investigator told the jury that Georgette admitted in a May interview that she did see her father shove her mother into the window.

Allen-Gonzales’ stepmother testified that she picked up Nicole from the hospital after that fight. Deborah Allen told jurors her stepdaughter blamed Ray Gonzales for the injuries and said it wasn’t the first time he had abused her during their 10-year marriage.

“She said it had been going on since they got together,” Allen testified.

She was one of several witnesses who told the jury that Allen-Gonzales recanted her story because she didn’t want Ray to lose his job. Allen-Gonzales testified that she is unemployed and has applied to receive welfare.

Last month, Ray Gonzales was fired as the supervisor of a county welfare-to-work facility. His termination from the $58,619-a-year job came less than a month after county administrators placed him on paid leave while investigating complaints about his management style.

Gonzales was hired in May 1998 to supervise a staff of about 25 people in the county’s CalWORKS office in Oxnard. The office provides job training and counseling for welfare recipients. He has vowed to fight the firing in court.

Gonzales’ position as a school trustee has not been affected by the court case or his firing. Testimony in his trial is scheduled to resume today.