Supe seeks hearing amid new allegations
3 more women accuse nonprofit’s ex-leader of sexual assault, violence
A top San Francisco official is calling for a hearing on the handling of sexual harassment and assault cases by law enforcement amid new allegations against a former top leader of a powerful housing nonprofit.
Jon Jacobo was a rising star in progressive politics involved in many community organizations when he faced a firestorm in 2021 after a tenants rights activist, Sasha Perigo, accused him of sexually assaulting her months earlier in his apartment.
Now, three additional women have come forward to accuse Jacobo of sexual assault or domestic violence, according to a report published Tuesday in the San Francisco Standard. Jacobo was director of community development for the housing nonprofit TODCO until he resigned Tuesday.
The three women, who spoke to the Standard on the condition of anonymity, alleged a series of abusive incidents involving Jacobo between 2015 and 2019. The three women filed police reports against him after Perigo came forward, according to the Standard.
The Standard questioned whether the police thoroughly investigated the accusations and whether they’ve made the cases a high priority. Evan Sernoffsky, a police spokesperson, declined to discuss specifics about the women’s allegations or police handling of their cases but said the department is “working diligently on them.” The district attorney’s office con
firmed Jacobo has not been charged related to these allegations.
Jacobo, who did not respond to requests for comment from the Standard, could not be reached by the Chronicle.
But Anna Yee, CEO of TODCO, said in a statement Tuesday that Jacobo “has resigned from TODCO as of today. After initial allegations were made against Jon, we conducted an internal review of his work with our organization and we found no issues. We were not aware of the issues raised today. … We must listen and hear the voices of women when they speak out and we must remember everyone deserves due process.”
Jacobo, who resigned from the city’s building commission after Perigo’s accusation, denied the allegations at the time, saying on social media that the encounter was consensual. Despite the allegations, within months community leaders were welcoming Jacobo back. Perigo said at the time she was not going to press charges because she did not trust the police.
In light of the new allegations, Supervisor Hillary Ronen told the Chronicle she is calling the hearing to learn how the police department investigates sexual assault and harassment allegations, as well as how it engages with survivors. Ronen represents the Mission District, where Jacobo has been involved in multiple community and nonprofit groups. He was widely expected to run for her seat before Perigo came forward.
San Francisco police did not provide reporters with a specific comment on the hearing. In a statement posted on X, San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott said the department “is working diligently on these open investigations.”
“We take sexual assault cases very seriously and we work closely with our victims,” the statement said. “We urge anyone who is a victim of sexual assault to come forward and report your case to the SFPD.”
Ronen said she wants to learn about how the Office of Sexual Harassment and Assault Response and Prevention, or SHARP, operates, including how many complaints are made to the office annually and how many get resolved. She also wants to learn what follow-up the department does with victims of sexual assault and harassment.
Officials from the district attorney’s office, the Human Rights Commission and SHARP have all been asked to participate in the hearing.
Ronen held an explosive hearing on sexual harassment and assault in 2018 when a dozen women and advocates described how key city agencies had allegedly been mishandling rape cases, leaving survivors feeling mistreated by those who were supposed to help. The hearing led to the creation of SHARP, but Ronen told the Chronicle on Tuesday she has been disappointed by how little work has come out of the office. She said she wants to hear whether SHARP has made it easier for survivors of assault and harassment to come forward with allegations and press charges when necessary. “This office was supposed to help,” Ronen said in an interview. “But we have seen little to no success. (It) has never become what I hoped it could be.”
SHARP Director KellyLou Densmore said in a statement there are “challenges” related to the work the group does.
“We continue to work to identify ways to improve our collaboration with city colleagues. Our mission is for the system to be of benefit and support to survivors and not cause harm,” she said, adding she’s looking forward to “learning how we can do better to support those who the system has failed.”
The first accusation against Jacobo exploded into public view in August 2021, after Perigo accused him of raping her in April of that year. The two had been friends, and intimate once, but in her post, Perigo said she had ended any sexual relationship with him months before.
Perigo described Jacobo groping her and kissing her that night and raping her the next morning. Perigo said she told Jacobo “no” dozens of times during both encounters, and tried to push him off her and block his advances, but that he repeatedly ignored her pleas and persisted.
She described the encounter in a Google Doc titled “A Prominent San Francisco Politico Raped Me. He Can’t Have Any More Victims,” in which she shared additional details about the assault, contemporaneous messages she sent Jacobo confronting him about the incident and discharge paperwork from a hospital after a sexual assault exam and a letter from the SFPD’s Special Victims Unit.
In the wake of Perigo’s accusations, Jacobo took a leave of absence from TODCO, but within months, Jacobo was attending community and political events, including a Rose Pak Community Fund event alongside former Supervisor Jane Kim.
Kim later apologized for inviting Jacobo to the event. Reached for comment Tuesday, she directed reporters back to the statement she made back then, which reads in part: “It was a mistake for Jon to attend the Rose Pak Community Fund Dinner and I take ownership of his attendance.”
One woman in Tuesday’s Standard story said she was physically and emotionally abused by Jacobo during their more than three-year relationship, alleging that he would choke her and threaten to kill her and her family members. That experience appears to align with that of a woman who filed a personal injury lawsuit against Jacobo in San Mateo County Superior Court in 2022, alleging a pattern of egregious physical and emotional abuse.
In an incident involving a different woman, Jacobo allegedly was found half-naked in a bed with the woman who was unconscious and topless, and the woman said she couldn’t remember how she got into the bedroom, according to the Standard’s reporting. A third woman said that Jacobo had been staying on her couch when he sneaked into her bed naked and left only after the woman repeatedly rejected his sexual advances.
With a tear rolling down her cheek, a visibly despondent Supervisor Catherine Stefani said she was appalled by the new allegations against Jacobo and was reminded of the pushback she received in 2018 during the last board hearing on sexual violence.
“Thinking about what women have to endure in our city, in what we think is a progressive city, it just honestly makes me sick,” Stefani said. “The onslaught and attacks on women in this country are just out of control. And if you don’t think so, wake up.”
Stefani agreed with Ronen that six years after SHARP was created, “we failed.”
“We tried to do something and we have not been successful,” she said.