Ex-Pomona councilman sentenced to probation in child porn case

A former Pomona city councilman will have to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life under the terms of a plea deal he reached with Los Angeles County prosecutors, authorities said Wednesday.

Rubio Gonzalez, 45, was sentenced to three years of probation and a year of counseling after pleading no contest to one count of possession of child sexual abuse material and one count of annoying or molesting a child, according to a statement released by the district attorney’s office.

“He took advantage of his position and violated the privacy and innocence of children,� Dist. Atty. George Gascón said in the statement.

Gonzalez was arrested in May and accused of taking inappropriate pictures of students at Cortez and Arroyo elementary schools, where he had worked as a substitute teacher. Investigators also alleged they discovered images containing child pornography on Gonzalez’s computer.

If convicted as charged, Gonzalez faced up to seven years in state prison.

A spokesman for the district attorney’s office did not immediately respond to questions about the terms of the negotiated plea. But according to a directive issued by Gascón late last year, prosecutors have been ordered to seek probation in cases where a defendant is eligible to receive it, barring “extraordinary circumstances.�

In an e-mail to a Times reporter last year, Gonzalez said the charges stemmed from his “inappropriate use of technology, but no child was ever molested by me.�

At the time, Gonzalez described himself as the “only advocate against violence toward women and children� on the City Council and said he was one of the founders of a multi-agency human trafficking coalition that supported the Pomona Police Department’s efforts to rescue women and teenagers from prostitution and sex trafficking.

Gonzalez was a teacher for more than 15 years, working for the Pomona and Los Angeles unified school districts as well as several other districts in California and Texas, according to his since-deleted biography on the city of Pomona’s website.