A 34-year-old Fairfield man pleaded no contest last month, The Reporter has learned, to more than a dozen felonies in a notorious child abuse, sex assault and child endangerment case that came to light more than five years ago.
Jonathan Michael Allen, who was previously scheduled for a jury trial in October, instead entered the no-contest pleas on Aug. 18 during a hearing in Department 11 in the Justice Center in Fairfield.
Official Solano County Superior Court records viewed Thursday showed Allen pleaded no contest to four felony counts of lewd and lascivious acts with a child under 14; nine felony counts of willful cruelty to a child, with possible injury or death; and one count of domestic violence with great bodily injury. He also admitted to six special allegations of great bodily injury.
With Allen’s plea — not admitting guilt but offering no defense — Judge William J. Pendergast, who had presided over the case for years, immediately found him guilty of the 14 counts. At the same time, however, as part of the plea agreement, the judge dismissed eight other counts, including seven counts of torture and one of willful cruelty to a child. He also vacated a scheduled Oct. 2 jury trial.
Pendergast then ordered Allen to return for a presentencing report and formal sentencing — as agreed, to 36 years and eight months in prison — at 8:30 a.m. Oct. 17. Allen also will be subject to 10 years of supervised parole upon release and be required to register as a sex offender.
During the August hearing, Deputy District Attorney William P. Moser represented the Solano County DA’s Office, and Alternate Public Defender Thomas Barrett represented Allen, who remains in the Stanton Correctional Facility in Fairfield.
Court records also show Allen was charged in the case along with his wife, Ina Aurelia Rogers, also 34. She was charged with 10 counts of willful child endangerment but pleaded no contest on Dec. 16, 2019. Rogers is scheduled to be sentenced at 8:30 a.m. on Nov. 30, also in Department 11.
She has remained out of custody after her attorney, Barry K. 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, while Allen was taken into custody several weeks later, on May 10, with the couple’s story making state and national headlines for its level of depravity.
According to the criminal complaint, the crimes occurred between January 2015 and 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, finding 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 the complaint’s wording.
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.
Allen originally had been scheduled for a jury trial in early May 2020, but, because of the pandemic and public health directives during the past several 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, and the pouring of scalding hot water on a child’s feet.
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.”