Trustee Gets Probation for Spousal Abuse

An Oxnard Elementary School District trustee convicted last week of battering his wife was spared a jail sentence Monday.

Instead, Ray Gonzales, 42, was placed on three years’ probation and ordered to attend 52 weeks of domestic violence counseling.

He was warned to obey all laws and ordered not to harass his estranged wife, Nicole. At the prosecution’s request, the school board member also was instructed to attend 15 weeks of parenting classes.

Gonzales, who retains his position as a school trustee despite the misdemeanor conviction, made no statements during the hearing.

He nodded approvingly at one point as the sentence was handed down in Ventura County Superior Court, assuring Judge James P. Cloninger that he was capable of meeting the terms of his probation.

Although misdemeanor spousal battery can be punished by a year in jail, Cloninger said a jail sentence was not appropriate in Gonzales’ case. The defendant has no prior criminal record and did not severely injure his 29-year-old spouse.

He spent one day in jail when he was arrested on the spousal battery charge earlier this year.

“What you have here is an unfortunate situation, where Mr. Gonzales pushed his wife,” Cloninger said. “It certainly is not the most severe case of domestic violence I’ve ever seen.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. Wendy MacFarlane was disappointed with the ruling.

She had urged Cloninger to impose 30 days jail time, saying some time in custody was warranted after Gonzales shoved his wife into a broken window during an argument at the couple’s Oxnard home.

“I think he got off light,” she said.

Last week, a jury found Gonzales guilty of misdemeanor spousal battery, despite Nicole Allen-Gonzales’ testimony that he never pushed her. Allen-Gonzales had sustained a cut on her right forearm that required six stitches.

On her way home from the hospital, she told her stepmother that Gonzales hurt her by shoving her into a window during a fight, and she said it was not the first time he had abused her, according to court testimony. She told a physician’s assistant a similar story two days later, according to testimony.

But the homemaker denied to police and prosecutors that her husband of 10 years was to blame. The truth, she told them, was that she tripped over children’s toys, falling onto a couch and flinging her arm into a broken window pane.

Allen-Gonzales told jurors during her husband’s two-day trial that she made up the abuse story because she was having an affair with a neighbor and feared losing her three children during a divorce.

Defense attorney Willard Wiksell argued that Allen-Gonzales was telling the truth when she said her husband was not to blame. But after returning a guilty verdict, jurors said they believed that the wife lied on the witness stand.

The conviction comes about a month after Gonzales was fired as director of a county-run welfare-to-work program in Oxnard. Gonzales has said he plans to fight the CalWORKS termination before a civil service commission.

Before his arrest, Gonzales was described as a community hero for saving the life of Oxnard Mayor Manuel Lopez’s wife, Irma, during a 1993 workplace shooting that left four people dead.

He went on to serve as a city planning commissioner in 1997 and 1998, before his election to the Oxnard elementary district board.

District officials said last week that the misdemeanor conviction does not affect Gonzales’ standing on the school board.