William Allan Jacobs
A Deep Haven, Minnesota man with a link to Cook County’s North Shore was charged in January 2010 with sexually abusing a 15-yearold boy. William Allan Jacobs, 68, a former captain of the Minneapolis Park Police, owns a cabin on Cascade Beach Road in Lutsen. More than two years after being charged, Williams was finally sentenced Monday, April 9, to 18 years in prison.
According to Fourth Judicial District court documents, the boy reported that Williams had been sexually abusing him since he was 12 years old, starting when he went on a camping trip with the defendant in the summer of 2007. The document graphically details numerous incidents of abuse and states, “The defendant also took ‘Child A’ to his cabin up north on multiple occasions” where the sexual abuse escalated.
Based on the teenager’s report of the abuse, as well as a monitored telephone call in which Jacobs and the victim discussed the abuse, the Hennepin County Sheriff ’s Office searched Jacobs’ home and found child pornography.
The sheriff ’s office was also concerned because Jacobs had spent much of his career in a position of authority around children. According to court documents, he was a camp counselor at Camp Warren in Eveleth in the 1960s and 1970s. He taught at the Blake School in 1971-72 and at Breck’s Minneapolis campus from 1973 – 1976. He was also a hockey coach and a guitar instructor. He joined the Park Police in 1975 and rose to rank of captain, running the force from 1987 to 2001.
After the first media reports in 2010, other young men came forward with accusations. According to a May 7, 2010 court document, 17 other victims had come forward, detailing incidents of abuse by Jacobs during stays at Camp Warren and on overnight trips at the Blake and Breck’s schools. Unfortunately, according to Hennepin County Attorney Michael O. Freeman in a March 2010 statement, those cases were past the statute of limitations for prosecution, having occurred before 1984.
According to David Hanners, of St. Paul Pioneer Press, the boy, now 17 years old, whose charges led to Jacobs’ arrest, was present at the sentencing. Hanners reported that the boy “stood with eyes fixed on his tormenter one last time as two sheriff ’s deputies led Jacobs through a door out of the courtroom.”
Hanners reported, “The door closed and Jacobs was gone. The young man’s shoulders fell in liberation. He hugged his mom. It was over.”
Jacobs received the maximum sentence he could have gotten after he pled guilty in March to three counts of criminal sexual conduct and three counts of possession of child pornography. Jacobs must serve at least 12 years of the 18-year sentence before he is released. Once released, he will be a registered sex offender and must spend the remainder of his life on probation. At that plea hearing, Jacobs admitted he sexually abused the boy at least twice during 2007, and perhaps as many as 20 times over the next two years.
According to Pioneer Press, Hennepin County District Judge Daniel Morales told Jacobs, “I can’t find any reason to sentence you to anything less than 18 years.”
Hanners reported that the sentencing came at the end of a sometimes emotional 75-minute hearing in which the victim and his father gave victim-impact statements. The courtroom was packed with family members and people who claimed they too were Jacobs’ victims.
In separate turns at the lectern, son and father called the man they once trusted a sexual predator who spent decades preying on young boys.
“I was stripped of my childhood,” the teen said. “I will live with this until the day I die.”
Hanners wrote that Jacobs, given the chance to speak before being sentenced, delivered an 11-minute soliloquy in which he agreed “he’d hurt people and should’ve gotten help.” He referred to his problem as a “curse” and blamed it for his actions. Some of the information for this report was drawn from a news article by David Hanners of the St. Paul Pioneer Press. His full report can be seen at www.twincities.com.
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