Jon Jacobo

Introduction

Jon Jacobo is a former San Francisco affordable-housing executive and Mission District political organizer who was charged in August 2024 with rape, forced oral copulation, sexual battery and domestic violence after four women accused him of sexual and domestic abuse. Once described as a rising star of the city’s progressive political wing and a likely future candidate for supervisor, Jacobo resigned from the affordable-housing nonprofit TODCO in April 2024 on the day The San Francisco Standard published the accounts of three additional women. He has pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial.

Background Information

Jacobo built his career across San Francisco’s affordable-housing and Latino community organizations. He worked on former Supervisor Jane Kim’s 2018 campaign for mayor and was later hired as an aide in her City Hall office, and he went on to serve as director of community development at TODCO, one of the most politically powerful housing nonprofits in the city. He also held leadership roles at the nonprofit Calle 24 — where he was listed as vice president until April 2024 — and with the Latino Task Force during the pandemic, and he became a spokesperson for Mission District street vendors fighting a ban on vending.

By the early 2020s he was widely expected to run for supervisor, and was described as an heir apparent to the District 9 seat. In 2022, TODCO president John Elberling said he planned to hand Jacobo control of the organization’s financial structure, which would have given him influence over hundreds of thousands of dollars in spending on local polling and ballot measures.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Allegations. The claims in this section are allegations from the women who came forward, from San Francisco police reports, and from criminal charges filed by the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office, as reported by Mission Local, The San Francisco Standard, KQED and ABC7 News. Jacobo was charged in August 2024 and ordered to stand trial in February 2025, but the charges have not been tested at trial; he has not been convicted of anything described here, has pleaded not guilty, and is presumed innocent. He denied the accusations and said the encounter at issue was consensual.

In August 2021, affordable-housing advocate Sasha Perigo publicly accused Jacobo of raping her months earlier at his apartment. In a social media post she linked to a seven-page document laying out her account, including what she said were rape-kit results and screenshots of messages she had sent him — one reading, “you literally looked me in the eye and took my pants off AS I WAS TELLING YOU NO.” Jacobo said the encounter was consensual. Perigo declined to press charges, citing her distrust of the criminal justice system, but said she went public after learning he “not only pushed boundaries with other women in the past, but was continuing to do so.”

Three women filed police reports against Jacobo in the months that followed, including a former girlfriend and two women who spoke with The Standard on condition of anonymity. Their accounts ranged from stalking, harassment and threats to domestic violence, strangulation, sexual assault and rape, and they shared audio recordings, text messages and photographs with the newspaper, some of which also went to the San Francisco Police Department. A woman who dated Jacobo for years told The Standard: “As time went on, he would threaten to kill me constantly. It started off as jokes and later escalated to direct, repeated threats. And that was terrifying.”

On April 16, 2024, The Standard published its investigation into the allegations from four women. Jacobo resigned from his executive position at TODCO that day and stepped down from Calle 24’s board. TODCO chief executive Anna Yee said the organization had reviewed Jacobo’s work after the 2021 accusation and found no issues, and that investigating such accusations was “outside the scope of a social justice, service nonprofit.”

On August 5, 2024, District Attorney Brooke Jenkins announced four charges: one count of rape by force, one count of oral copulation by force, one count of sexual battery by restraint and one count of domestic violence. Jacobo was booked into San Francisco County Jail that afternoon and held on $2 million bond, and the district attorney moved to detain him pending trial. According to prosecutors, the charged counts stem from a relationship that began in 2019 and ended in February 2021; they allege that in April 2021 Jacobo sexually assaulted the woman in his home after she made clear she did not want sexual contact. He pleaded not guilty.

Public Reaction and Consequences

The charges landed in a city already arguing over how its political class had handled years of warnings about Jacobo, and the backlash reached the institutions that had sheltered him. District Attorney Brooke Jenkins thanked the survivor “for her courage to come forward and cooperation with law enforcement’s investigation,” and said her office would “do everything in our power to ensure that there is accountability in this case.” Police Chief Bill Scott said the department was working “diligently” as pressure grew for the cases to be investigated.

Supervisor Hillary Ronen called for a hearing on how the police department handles sexual assault cases, and the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee — the governing board of the local party — announced a task force intended to root out sexual misconduct in the city’s political circles. More than 50 people attended a May 2024 hearing at which survivors of sexual assault and harassment shared their stories and called out local leaders they said had turned a blind eye.

The reaction from women in local politics was especially pointed. After Perigo’s 2021 accusation, former Supervisor Jane Kim brought Jacobo to a Rose Pak Community Fund fundraising gala; the San Francisco Women’s Political Committee called it “shameful and unacceptable” that he was being ushered back into the political world, and Kim said five days later that bringing him had been a “mistake” and that he “should be 100% accountable for his actions.” Nadia Rahman, then president of the committee, said the outcome was a long time coming: “It’s been three long years, and a lot of us thought this would never happen. The credit goes to the survivors.” Ivy Lee, director of the city’s Office of Victim and Witness Rights, said “there should be zero tolerance” for sexual violence and argued that “when we say we believe the survivors, that has to mean something concrete.”

Perigo and two other accusers said in a collective statement that the charges were “a meaningful step toward accountability,” adding that “many proclaim to ‘believe survivors’ in statements, but the sad reality is that this is often empty rhetoric.” Mission Local also reported that employees at Mission Girls were fired after speaking out about Jacobo.

Current Status

Jacobo has been out of custody on home detention while the case proceeds. In August 2024, Superior Court Judge Kenneth Wine ordered his release over the district attorney’s objections, saying the decision rested on letters of support submitted to the court and the “many great deeds” Jacobo had done; the district attorney’s office described the terms as the “strictest conditions” of home detention, including surrendering his passport, wearing an ankle monitor and staying home except for medical appointments, with no contact with any victims or witnesses.

At a preliminary hearing on February 20, 2025, Superior Court Judge A. Marisa Chun found sufficient evidence to hold Jacobo to answer on three felony counts — rape, non-consensual oral sex and sexual battery — along with a domestic-violence charge that was reduced to a misdemeanor. The prosecution called a single witness, San Francisco police Sergeant Esther Gonzales, who had investigated Perigo’s 2021 report; prosecutors successfully blocked a defense attempt to subpoena Perigo, and the court allowed Gonzales to testify in her place under Proposition 115. Defense attorney Martina Avalos, who said the case “boils down to an issue of credibility,” called the ruling a step that left her hopeful “the truth will come out” and said there would be no plea deal “because he’s innocent.”

The Voice of San Francisco reported in a column updated in June 2026 that the release conditions had held through a defense request for more leniency, and that court records showed a December 18 order modifying them to allow a family trip to Disneyland with his partner — recalled San Francisco school board president Gabriela Lopez — and their baby daughter. The paper criticized the outing, writing that photographs of the “smiling, happy little family” made “a mockery of the severity of the charges as well as of the victims.” No trial date had been reported as of this writing.

Impact on Their Career/Life

The allegations and charges ended Jacobo’s career in San Francisco housing and political life. He lost his executive position at TODCO and his board seat at Calle 24 within hours of The Standard’s investigation, and the supervisor campaign that political observers had expected him to mount never materialized.

His standing in the Mission District community — where he had been the public face of the street vendors’ fight and a fixture of Latino political organizing — fractured along lines that had been visible since 2021. Mission Local reported that community leaders who had worked closely with him declined to comment on the rape allegations or to distance themselves from him, and that after the first public accusation some leaders had effectively normalized his position in the community by having him participate in men’s groups as part of a restorative-justice effort. Others faced consequences for pushing back: Mission Girls employees who spoke out were fired.

The case also became a lasting marker in San Francisco politics, cited in debates over the local Democratic Party’s handling of sexual-misconduct allegations and over how the police department investigates sexual assault more broadly.

Sources

The San Francisco Standard, Josh Koehn, “Women accused a rising SF political star of rape and abuse—and met a wall of silence,” April 16, 2024. source
Mission Local, Eleni Balakrishnan, “Mission leader Jon Jacobo, again accused of rape and assault, resigns,” April 16, 2024. source
The San Francisco Standard, Annie Gaus, “Jon Jacobo, San Francisco political operative, charged with rape and domestic violence,” August 5, 2024. source
ABC7 News, “Former San Francisco housing nonprofit director Jon Jacobo charged with rape, sexual battery, domestic violence,” August 6, 2024. source
KQED, Katie DeBenedetti, “Jon Jacobo, SF Political Organizer Accused of Rape, to Be Released Pending Trial,” August 14, 2024. source
Mission Local, Abigail Vân Neely, “Jon Jacobo headed to trial on sexual-assault charges,” February 20, 2025. source
The Voice of San Francisco, Susan Dyer Reynolds, “Accused serial rapist Jon Jacobo goes to Disneyland,” January 9, 2025, updated June 10, 2026. source