Ex-California mayor convicted of sex crimes against boy he met on Grindr
Tori Richards
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The former mayor of a Northern California city will serve seven years in prison for sex crimes committed with a young boy he met on the dating app Grindr.
Robert Jacob, 45, agreed to the sentence in a plea bargain last week on multiple charges of sexual assault that included penetration with a foreign object. The plea came as a jury trial was scheduled to begin. Jacob, who owns a marijuana dispensary business, paid the boy $75 for each in-person sexual encounter.
He was mayor of the small agricultural city of Sebastopol between 2012 and 2016.
The boy was under 15 when he met Jacob on the Grindr app in 2019. Jacob was aware that the victim was underage, but he “touched him sexually multiple times,” sent nude photos, and asked the boy to have sex with “unknown men,” the Press Democrat reported.
The encounters continued for another two years until Jacob ended the affair by saying he told his husband, who disapproved. After that, either the boy or his parents reported Jacob to county child protection officials.
Details of the crimes were publicly disclosed on March 7 when the boy testified during a preliminary hearing.
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“It progressed. It became more sexual after we met,” the Press Democrat reported the teenager as saying. “He would leave me a step-by-step process of what to do when I arrived.”
This included which room to undress in and where to put his clothes. Then Jacob blindfolded the boy and brought him to a bedroom. He was instructed not to speak other than saying “yes” or “no.”
The boy testified that he was instructed to refer to Jacob at all times as “master” or “sir” because it made him feel in control and was sexually arousing.
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Jacob will be formally sentenced on March 23, which includes a lifetime designation as a registered sex offender.