Ina A. Rogers (Solano County Sheriff’s Office)
A Solano County Superior Court judge once again has reshuffled the sentencing for a 33-year-old Fairfield woman charged, along with her husband, in connection with a notorious child torture, endangerment and assault case that came to light more than four years ago.
Ina Aurelia Rogers, who appeared Wednesday in the Justice Center in Fairfield, heard a judge reschedule her sentencing for 8:30 a.m. April 14, court records show.
Judge William J. Pendergast, who presided over her case, was out sick during the morning proceeding, so the matter was heard in another courtroom, but he will return for the sentencing in his courtroom, Department 11.
Rogers, who has been charged with 10 counts of willful child endangerment and pleaded no contest in late 2019, and has been scheduled and rescheduled for sentencing many times.
Her no-contest plea meant she did not admit guilt but stated, essentially, she would offer no defense. She is represented by Fairfield criminal defense attorney Barry Kent Newman.
Rogers has remained out of custody after Newman earlier submitted a motion for her release and the judge granted it. At sentencing, Rogers could face up to six years in state prison and up to a $10,000 fine for a single felony charge alone.
She was arrested on April 3, 2018, and her husband, Jonathan Michael Allen, also 33, several weeks later, on May 10, with the couple’s story making national headlines.
The Alternate Public Defender represents Allen, who remains in the Stanton Correctional Facility in Fairfield, with bail set at $5.25 million.
The alleged crimes surfaced in March 2018, when one of their sons, who was 12 at the time and said to have the mental capacity of an 8-year-old, disappeared from the family’s Fieldstone Court residence.
Police were notified and searched the home as part of the investigation and found what they described as squalid, unsafe, and unsanitary living conditions, “including garbage and spoiled food on the floor, animal and human feces, and a large amount of debris making areas of the house unpassable,” according to wording in the Solano County District Attorney’s complaint.
Nine more children, ranging in age from 4 months to 11 years old at the time, were found inside. The missing boy, asleep under a nearby bush, was located soon afterward.
Some of the charges against Allen, multiple counts of child torture, child cruelty with possible injury, and lewd acts on a child date back to 2014.
He originally had been scheduled for a jury trial in early May 2020, but, because of the pandemic and public health directives during the past three years, some court operations were reduced and cases reshuffled as COVID-19 cases surged and ebbed.
During a preliminary hearing in December 2018, horrific allegations of torture, based on investigators’ findings, were heard in public for the first time. All directed at Allen — more than 10 of them, the maximum number posted on a public court calendar — they included physical abuse that left scars and cuts, evidence of choking, malnutrition, the use of duct tape and waterboarding, biting that drew blood, the shooting of sharp wooden sticks or small metal rods from a bow, the pouring of scalding hot water on a child’s feet. Allen also is charged with at least three counts of lewd acts on a child under 14.
Former Solano County Chief Deputy District Attorney Sharon Henry said at the time that she was “horrified” by the children’s statements and that “as a parent, first and foremost in my heart, we believe these children deserve justice.”
If found guilty of the torture and molestation charges, Allen faces more than 50 years to life in state prison.
Originally published at Richard Bammer