A gay former Sebastopol mayor and cannabis entrepreneur was convicted of six felony crimes involving the sexual abuse of a child.
Robert Jacob, 45, pleaded no contest to the six counts in Sonoma County Superior Court on January 20.
Jacob had served on the Sebastopol City Council from 2012 to 2016 and was selected mayor by his colleagues in 2013.
The crimes Jacob pleaded to include a number of activities, from contacting the victim with the intent to commit a specific offense and ultimately committing acts of sexual abuse against the victim, who was under the age of 15. As a result of Jacob's plea, five other felony counts were dismissed, according to the Sonoma County District Attorney's Office website.
As the Bay Area Reporter previously reported, Jacob is also the co-founder of Peace and Medicine, Sonoma's first cannabis dispensary, which later merged with SPARC, a San Francisco-based dispensary founded by Erich Pearson, a gay man. After the merger, Jacob served as president of SPARC, although the affiliation ended several years ago.
"The allegations against Robert Jacob, who has not been affiliated or associated with SPARC for several years, involve horrible and unconscionable actions," Pearson wrote on social media after news of Jacob's arrest in 2021.
Charges against Jacob surfaced April 10, 2021, when Sebastopol police arrested him, based on information they had received a month prior about alleged sexual assaults that may have happened in the city from December 2019 to March 2021. Following an investigation, he was arrested and initially held without bond in the Sonoma County Main Adult Detention Center.
Jacob, who is currently not being held in jail, is scheduled to return to court for sentencing on March 23, a little more than two years after his arrest by the Sebastopol Police Department.
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