A member of two key oversight bodies in San Francisco’s criminal justice system has been arrested on suspicion of a slate of suspected felony sexual assault allegations, records show.

William Monroe “Tariq” Palmer II  — whose story of redemption after three decades in prison led to media coverage and his emergence as an advocate — is accused of assault with force likely to commit great bodily injury, assault with intent to commit a felony, sexual battery by restraint, sodomy by use of force and false imprisonment.

The alleged incident took place in late August, according to two law enforcement officials familiar with the case, who asked to speak anonymously. Investigators believe Palmer offered a ride to a woman who was walking to a BART station, took the woman to his home and assaulted her.

He was booked into San Francisco jail at 10:33 a.m. Thursday and is being held without bail.

Palmer was arrested on a warrant from the District Attorney’s Office, and his first court appearance is set for Monday, said Randy Quezada, a spokesperson for the agency.

Palmer was 17 when he was sentenced to life in prison after accosting an off-duty police officer at gunpoint and demanding money. When the man told him he didn’t have any cash on him, Palmer took him — in the man’s car — to an ATM at gunpoint, where the off-duty officer withdrew $200. When they returned to the car, the officer retrieved his gun and shot Palmer in the knee.

Palmer ran away but was arrested soon after. 

In prison, Palmer earned his GED and an associate’s degree. He studied art and took up painting. He painted murals there and, after his release, in a pod at the San Francisco County Jail. 

His requests for parole were denied repeatedly over 20 years, and ultimately he challenged his continued detention. When Palmer’s lawyers argued for his release decades later, they acknowledged that he “was reckless and impulsive and created a dangerous situation.” His sentence, however, was “constitutionally disproportionate,” they said.

The California Supreme Court ruled that his 23 years of incarceration were excessive. 

He was released in March 2019 and was on parole at the time of his arrest Thursday.

His experiences — both during and after his incarceration — drew significant media attention, from the Marshall Project and the Washington Post, which looked at the challenges former prisoners face while on parole. And he was featured in the Chronicle for his efforts to stop generational cycles of incarceration. 

After his release in 2019, Palmer immersed himself in civic life. He worked with an organization providing legal services to prisoners with children. On his LinkedIn page, he listed jobs with a Black-owned newspaper and a nonprofit to help “formerly incarcerated, at-risk youth, and system impacted individuals” find their footing back in society. He also hosts a local radio show.

The re-entry council appointed him to sit on the Sentencing Commission, which advises the mayor and Board of Supervisors on strategies “to improve public safety, reduce recidivism, and reform criminal sentencing.”

Palmer’s bio on the oversight board’s website says that after leaving prison, he “immediately assumed the position as a leader by advocating for social reforms, and mentoring youth.” It also noted he “had his own challenges with reentry.”

The Post story detailed Palmer’s efforts to rebuild his life, highlighting his work the Returned Citizens Theatre Troupe, a collective of former prisoners turned thespians. The story also chronicled his struggle with parole since his release, describing several encounters where he was jailed for violating terms of his parole, including one in which a fender bender in May 2020 led to an arrest. Court records show he was arrested in September of that year on another parole violation but further details were not immediately available.

Voters approved a charter amendment creating the oversight board in 2020. It consists of seven members, four appointed by the Board of Supervisors and three by the mayor’s office.

In 2021, members of the San Francisco Jail Justice Coalition — including Glide, the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office, and the Young Women’s Freedom Center, urged Supervisor Shamann Walton to support his application to the oversight board, saying he had “been instrumental in moving our jail system towards more just and fair outcomes for incarcerated people and their families.”

On his 2021 application to join the sheriff’s oversight board, Palmer said he is passionate about justice and equity in sentencing, adding that he would bring an essential perspective to the board because of his experience as a youth offender who’d received an unconstitutionally long sentence. 

“My period of incarceration has prepared me for my purpose in life,” he wrote, “to reform the criminal justice system with fair sentencing for juveniles, adults and life term inmates while maintaining public safety and justice.“

In July 2021, Walton submitted the names of Palmer and  three others to the supervisors’ Rules Committee, which forwarded them to the full board. 

Supervisors then appointed Palmer in 2021 to fill a seat. His term expired this year, and he was reappointed for a full four-year term.  

Upon hearing of the arrest, Supervisor Aaron Peskin said Saturday he’d written to Palmer and asked him to resign from the sheriff’s oversight board “effective immediately.”

“Otherwise I’ll have to go through the process of removing him,” he said.

Reach St. John Barned-Smith: stjohn.smith@sfchronicle.com 

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A homeless man and convicted child molester who camped near a San Francisco school with signs saying “free fentanyl 4 new users” was booked into jail Thursday, records show.

“We believe that he presented a public safety risk that necessitated him being in custody while this case is open,” District Attorney Brooke Jenkins told ABC7 Bay Area.

Jenkins announced on Oct. 26 that Moore would face multiple criminal charges.

San Francisco Superior Court judge Vedica Puri granted the DA’s request.

“While this city is extraordinarily empathetic to its unhoused, we offer untold amounts of services; there is a limit. So, when there’s a public nuisance issue, this court has to take it seriously,” Puri said, according to ABC7 Bay Area reported.

READ MORE: San Francisco Homelessness Battle Heats Up as Star Wars Theme Deployed From Speakers

Joseph Adam Moore was arrested by police around on Oct. 20 after he refused to remove his belongings and leave the area by 12:15 p.m. | Source: Garrett Leahy/The Standard

Jail records show Moore was booked into jail on Thursday around 11 a.m. on a $35,000 bond and is due in court next on Nov. 8.

Moore was booked on one misdemeanor charge of contempt of a court order, battery, and “obstructing free and comfortable use of liberty and property,” jail records show.

Moore’s attorney, Erica Franklin, said in an email that Moore is being charged with misdemeanor battery and maintaining a public nuisance through the use and/or placement of his tent. Franklin said her client is not being charged with contempt of a court order but is on misdemeanor probation for violating a restraining order to prevent him from straying on the property of the San Francisco Fire Department.

San Francisco police had previously said Moore was subject to a stay away order from the fire department after he created a nuisance by camping behind a San Francisco firehouse.

Franklin said she is moving to dismiss the public nuisance charge against Moore.

“The [public nuisance charge] is an unconstitutional attempt to get him to leave the neighborhood, as they were complaints about him, and it is not a valid charge. I will be filing a motion to dismiss it,” Franklin said.

Franklin told ABC7 the signs Moore posted outside his encampment is why Moore came to the attention of authorities.

“It’s not like anybody actually saw him giving meth or fentanyl to anybody,” Franklin told the news outlet. “He doesn’t; he didn’t have any meth or fentanyl on him.”

Police confirmed Moore was arrested for battery after throwing liquid on someone before getting into an altercation with them on Oct. 19. A day later, Moore told The Standard he had been punched in the face by a parent from the Stella Maris Academy. Police then arrested him.

ABC7’s Dan Noyes reports Moore poured a gallon jug of apple juice over a parent before the parent hit him.

Franklin said Moore’s battery charge is from a battery committed by a man against Mr. Moore, who was punched in the face.

“Mr. Moore was minding his own business and this man came over and tried to remove his signs and threatened to burn his property. The police refused to arrest this other man and arrested Mr Moore instead,” Franklin said.

Stella Maris is a K-8 Catholic school directly across the street from where Moore camped at Ninth Avenue and Geary Boulevard.

Signs reading “meth for stolen items” and “free fentanyl 4 new users” are displayed at Joseph Adam Moore’s encampment in San Francisco’s Inner Richmond neighborhood on Oct. 17. | Source: George Kelly/The Standard

San Francisco Archdiocese spokesperson Peter Marlow said the religious organization is following Moore’s case closely.

“We want to make sure children and families are safe, reach out to the homeless, and support a solution from the city that will achieve both of those goals,” Marlow said.

Convicted Pedophile

California’s Megan’s Law website lists Moore as a San Francisco transient convicted of lewd or lascivious acts with a child under 14 years of age in 1997 and released from prison in 2002. San Francisco Superior Court documents show Moore has been arrested five times in the city since 2007 for allegedly failing to re-register his address as a sex offender every 30 days. 

A Santa Cruz Sentinel article from 1997 reports Moore was convicted of molesting a 12-year-old girl in Santa Clara County before being released from custody and then having sex with a 15-year-old in Santa Cruz behind a set of bathrooms on Seabright Beach.

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A Dutch court on Tuesday jailed an Austrian handyman for helping a cult leader to isolate his own children on a farm for a decade, in a case that shocked the Netherlands.

The man, identified only as 61-year-old Joseph B. due to Dutch privacy rules, played an ‘essential role’ in depriving the six children of their liberty in the remote northeastern village of Ruinerwold, the court ruled, jailing him for three years.

The Austrian was a ‘disciple’ of the children’s father Gerrit Jan van Dorsten, buying groceries and renting the farm where van Dorsten believed he was readying his children for a new world called Eden.

‘The defendant played an essential role, and without his contribution it would not have been possible for the father to allow the children to live isolated from society for such a long period,’ the court in the northern city of Assen said.

Judges acquitted Joseph B. of detaining three older children, and of abusing any of van Dorsten’s children.

But he was also convicted of detaining another Austrian man who was a follower of the father and hanging him up in a shack for several weeks in 2009.

The father, who was accused of detaining, assaulting and abusing his children, was ruled unfit to stand trial last year after suffering a debilitating stroke.

The Austrian was a ‘disciple’ of the children’s father Gerrit Jan van Dorsten, buying groceries and renting the farm (pictured) where van Dorsten believed he was readying his children for a new world called Eden

The ‘space’ had daylight coming into it and the children were occasionally allowed outside, but never further than the farm’s perimeter fence

Gerrit Jan van Dorsten is pictured in the farmhouse grounds, 60 miles north of Amsterdam. He was arrested on suspicion of deprivation of liberty among other charges, but suffered a stroke and had the court case against him dropped

Six adult children – four women and two men, including Jan Zon van Dorsten (pictured) – were held prisoner at a Dutch farm for nine years

Pictured: Cafe De Kastelein in Ruinerwold where Jan Zon van Dorsten raised the alarm

Police arrested van Dorsten and Joseph B. in October 2019 after the eldest child walked into a local bar in a confused state and raised the alarm.

The children eventually revealed that their father had isolated them at the farmhouse from birth and beaten them from a young age to drive out ‘bad spirits’.

The father saw himself as a new Messiah and ‘saw it as his task to found a new society called Eden according to the rules of God,’ the court ruling said.

Joseph B. had found the farm in Ruinerwold, rented it in his name and renovated it with van Dorsten so that the family could live there in isolation, the court said.

He also ensured that money transferred from Austria went to the father and took care of daily groceries, even after van Dorsten’s stroke in 2016.

He had a ‘different role’ to the father but there was ‘sufficiently close and conscious cooperation’ between them to show that he was also guilty, the court ruled.

The case of the so-called Ruinerwold Children stunned the Netherlands and sparked an award-winning documentary.

The six children who were kept on the farm are now all young adults.

But relatives of van Dorsten in 2019 revealed three older siblings had already fled left the family’s isolated life before the father bought the farm and held the remaining six children captive.

Their statement added that van Dorsten told his family to ‘not make any attempt to find his place of residence’ when the relative parted ways decades ago.

According to the NL Times, the family said: ‘The family has taken notice of the events in Ruinerwold with dismay. In the past few days a family member informed us of the identity of the family found.

‘Gerrit Jan van Dorsten broke all ties with his immediate family in the 1980s. He told us not to make any attempt to find his place of residence.

‘Eight years ago, three children of Gerrit Jan van Dorsten fled the family in Hasselt and contacted their brother from a previous marriage, grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins. The family has since remained unaware of the existence of other children.’

Janny Knol, chief of the north Netherlands police, said in 2019 that the children were kept as an ‘enclosed space’ within the farm building which was divided ‘into small compartments.’

Ms Knol said the siblings – four women and two men – were largely kept inside the space but were occasionally allowed out into the yard, though no further than the farm’s perimeter fence.

Dutch police probing the case of a family who were locked away on an isolated farm for nine years. Prosecutors said the three oldest children were not allowed to talk about the existence of their brothers and sisters

Van Dorsten (pictured) posted videos on Facebook showing him working out in the garden

She said they appeared to be aged between 18 and 25, though that is not certain because they were not registered with authorities. They had not received any formal schooling, but were able to read and write Dutch.

In 2021, a court ruled that a 2016 stroke had so badly affected the father’s ability to communicate and comprehend that continuing with the case would breach his fair trial rights.

Corinne Jeekel, a lawyer representing the eldest four children, told Dutch broadcaster NOS that they were disappointed with the decision.

‘It is a great shame for the clients that there will be no criminal judgment’, Jeekel told national broadcaster NOS in March 2021.

The rest of the family, however, stood by their father.

‘The youngest five children are very happy,’ defense lawyer Robert Snorn told local broadcaster RTV Drenthe.

Prosecutors said at the time that the children are free to choose their own futures, even if that means returning to a life of isolation.

‘In the past 18 months, the children have got to know our society, have been able to participate in it and have received spiritual and medical care,’ prosecutors said in a statement.

‘If, now that they have been able to taste the alternative, they nevertheless choose to want to live in seclusion with their father again, to exercise their faith… that is their choice.’

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