Couple Sentenced to Life in Molestations

A 65-year-old retired Santa Paula High School teacher and his 47-year-old ex-wife were each given life prison sentences Monday for molesting two girls, ages 9 and 12, while they visited the couple between December 1996 and June 1997.

Gilbert Wayne Wright was ordered to serve 80 years to life in prison. Co-defendant Diana Nice was sentenced to 40 years to life in prison.

Because of the defendants’ ages, Deputy Dist. Atty. Audry Rohn said she expects both will die in prison before they become eligible for parole.

“It is a death sentence for them,” Rohn said.

Wright and Nice were convicted last month after a two-week trial in Ventura County Superior Court during which the two victims, half-sisters who live in Oklahoma, testified about how they were forced at separate times to participate in various sex acts with Wright.

Wright, a longtime math teacher and football coach, was found guilty of 10 counts of lewd and lascivious acts with a child. He was also convicted of two counts of aggravated sexual assault.

Nice, a former waitress, was found guilty on three counts of procuring a child for molestation and three counts of lewd and lascivious acts with a child for being Wright’s accomplice.

Defense lawyers for the two defendants argued that the girls fabricated the stories. But jurors believed the young witnesses, Rohn said.

“It’s the worst case of child molestation I’ve ever seen or heard of,” the prosecutor said. “And the fact that he was a high school teacher made it worse.”