Jon Jacobo, former Mission District leader, jailed on charges of sexual assault 

The former Mission District leader Jon Jacobo was charged with three counts of sexual assault and one count of domestic violence today by San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins, three years after a jarring and detailed public allegation.  

He was booked into San Francisco County Jail at 3:47 p.m. today. He is being held on a $2 million bond.

In a press release sent Monday afternoon, the district attorney’s office said the 35-year-old was being charged with one count of rape, one count of forced oral copulation, one county of sexual battery and one count of domestic violence. He will be arraigned on Tuesday, and the DA’s office is seeking to have him jailed while his case proceeds.

The alleged assault took place on April 4, 2021. While the DA did not name the victim in today’s public material, that is the same date that housing activist Sasha Perigo alleged that Jacobo had assaulted her at his home extremely detailed social media post on Aug. 6, 2021.

Reached for comment, Perigo today sent media outlets a press release she co-wrote with two other alleged victims of Jacobo’s. 

“There is a culture of impunity when it comes to crimes involving sexual violence. The charges brought forward against Jon Jacobo today represent a meaningful step toward accountability and changing that toxic culture,” it reads, in part. “Many proclaim to ‘believe survivors’ in statements, but the sad reality is that this is often empty rhetoric. In practice, survivors are not believed and often discredited. Survivors face character assassination and retaliation, negatively impacting our personal lives and professional careers.” 

Perigo told Mission Local in August 2021 that she did not want to see Jacobo criminally prosecuted, but would reconsider that stance if additional accusers came forward. They did: An April 2024, the San Francisco Standard reported on a series of women who said Jacobo victimized them.  

“Today is an important step in addressing the injuries and harm caused to us,” concludes the statement Perigo co-wrote. “The criminal legal system is not the first choice any of us would have made as the vehicle to hold Jon accountable, but we are committed to this process as the only one available to us, and to prevent other women from facing similar violence and abuse.”

Jacobo and Perigo were friends prior to the alleged incident, and had slept together once before. On the night of April 4, Jacobo invited Perigo over to his house for drinks, but Perigo shared text messages in which she had made clear to Jacobo beforehand that she was not looking for a sexual encounter.

That night, she stayed over at his apartment and said that he was persistent in his attempts to engage her, even though she said no.

The next morning, she wrote at the time, the “badgering continued, more aggressively than the evening before. He ignored my dozens of nos, took off my pants, and raped me anyways.” 

At the time of the accusation Jacobo was a director at the housing nonprofit TODCO, a board member at Calle 24, and served on the Building Inspection Commission, which oversees the Department of Building Inspection. 

Prior to Perigo’s accusation, Jacobo was a touted District 9 supervisor candidate and viewed as a political up-and-comer.

Jacobo denied the accusations on multiple occasions and called the encounters “consensual.” However, he resigned from his city-appointed position overseeing DBI quickly after the first accusations were made. He did not leave Calle 24 or TODCO, however, until this year, following the Standard article. 

Nadia Rahman, the former president of the San Francisco Women’s Political Committee, gave credit to Perigo and the other survivors of the alleged assaults for their continued focus on the case. She said the three years’ lag time was “ridiculous,” and an indication that sexual assault survivors are forced to be their own advocates.

“It was so much effort, mostly on the part of Sasha and the survivors, and this is to their credit that they fought for themselves,” she said. “This isn’t the system just working. The system hasn’t been working. Police reports were filed a long time [ago], and now there’s been some movement, and the credit goes to them.”

Jacobo will be arraigned tomorrow — three years to the day after Perigo named him publicly in her accusations.

Additional reporting by Joe Rivano Barros and Joe Eskenazi.