A civil jury hit former Windsor, California, Mayor Dominic Foppoli with an approximately $13 million verdict after finding the Democrat liable for sexually assaulting seven women, a legal reckoning that arrived only because criminal investigators never brought charges.
Foppoli, 44, was found liable this week for assaults that the seven anonymous plaintiffs say stretched across nearly two decades, from 2001 to 2020. The women, identified in court only as Jane Does, pursued their case through civil litigation after investigators said they lacked sufficient evidence to file criminal charges. A punitive damages hearing is set for Tuesday, meaning the final financial toll could climb higher still.
The verdict lands on a former Democratic elected official who resigned from office in May 2021, weeks after a San Francisco Chronicle exposé first aired the allegations publicly. No prosecutor ever charged him. The women had to fund their own pursuit of accountability, and a jury believed them.
The compensatory damages awarded to the seven women were not evenly split. Fox News reported that individual payouts ranged from $6,000 to $4,650,938, reflecting the jury's assessment of each plaintiff's claims. The Santa Rosa chapter of the Active 20-30 Club, an all-male charity social club of which Foppoli was a member, was separately ordered to pay $2 million to one of the women.
The allegations presented at trial were graphic. One accuser, a former campaign volunteer described as 18 years old at the time, testified that Foppoli assaulted her twice, including once after a New Year's Eve celebration where alcohol was involved. Another woman said Foppoli brought her to his home and tried to pull off her pants. A third alleged he forced her to perform oral sex after a convention. A winery intern in her twenties said she was forcibly groped and kissed.
Plaintiffs' attorney Gina Fortino Dickson called the outcome a watershed for the women who came forward.
"This is a huge victory for a lot of people, starting with the Jane Does."
A second plaintiffs' attorney, Traci Carrillo, framed the result in starker terms. As Just The News reported, Carrillo said the fight took more than five years:
"It took over 5 years to get them justice, which was always about accountability. Their trauma was real, and they were believed, not shamed or silenced in the courtroom."
Foppoli maintained his innocence after the verdict. Speaking publicly on Friday, he insisted the jury got it wrong.
"I just know in heart that I did not assault any of these people who were in court today and it's unfortunate that the jury didn't see that."
His defense attorney, Andrew Watters, signaled he would seek a mistrial, citing the exclusion of a defense witness. Watters did not concede the plaintiffs fabricated their accounts but argued their perceptions could be flawed.
"This was a trial about seven self-reported accounts of by the plaintiffs. And like I said in the closing, we're not saying they all lied about things they testified about. It's possible to be sincere and mistaken or have a distorted view."
In a separate statement reported by Fox News, Foppoli offered a partial concession about his personal conduct while denying the specific allegations: "I've been a terrible boyfriend and partner, cheating, selfish and egotistical, but I've never done any of those things I'm being sued for." That admission, acknowledging a pattern of selfish behavior while drawing a sharp line at assault, will likely follow him into the punitive damages phase.
The Democratic Party has faced a string of internal crises in recent years, from primary defeats of sitting governors to factional disputes over ideology and leadership. Foppoli's case adds a different dimension: a local Democratic officeholder whose alleged misconduct spanned nearly two decades without consequence from the justice system.
The civil route was not the women's first choice. After the Chronicle's 2021 exposé, criminal investigations were opened. But investigators ultimately said they lacked sufficient evidence to move forward. The state attorney general's office suspended its criminal inquiry in 2024, according to the New York Post. No charges were ever filed.
That left seven women with no path to accountability except the civil courts, where the burden of proof is lower than in criminal proceedings. A criminal conviction requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt; a civil finding of liability requires only a preponderance of the evidence, meaning the jury concluded it was more likely than not that the assaults occurred.
The gap between the criminal system's inaction and the civil jury's decisive verdict raises uncomfortable questions about how sexual assault cases are handled by prosecutors. The women waited years. They testified publicly, even if under pseudonyms. And they won a judgment that the criminal system never attempted to pursue.
Foppoli resigned as mayor of Windsor, a small town in Sonoma County, north of San Francisco, in May 2021, just weeks after the Chronicle report. But his departure from office did not end his political ambitions. He reportedly considered a comeback run for his old mayoral seat last year, a prospect that underscored how little formal consequence he had faced before this verdict.
That kind of political resilience in the face of serious allegations is not unique to one party, but the Democratic establishment has struggled visibly in recent cycles to manage its own internal fractures, whether over policy dissent in the House or growing revolts at the state level.
The seven-plaintiff verdict is not the end of Foppoli's legal exposure. Farrah Abraham, who starred in MTV's reality series "16 and Pregnant," filed a police report with the Palm Beach Police Department in April 2021 alleging that Foppoli drugged and raped her in Florida the previous month. Abraham filed a separate civil lawsuit against Foppoli, and that case is expected to go to trial early next year.
The Abraham allegations added a geographic and factual layer to the case against Foppoli. The seven Jane Does described assaults in and around Sonoma County. Abraham's claim placed Foppoli in Florida, allegedly committing a similar act against a woman with a public profile, a detail that drew national media attention to a story that had been largely regional.
Democrats have faced mounting questions about how their party handles internal accountability, from growing primary challenges against incumbents to debates about whether the party tolerates dissent from its own members. Foppoli's case sits in a different category, not ideological disagreement, but alleged criminal conduct that the party's institutional machinery did nothing to address before the Chronicle forced the story into public view.
The timeline presented at trial is striking. The women alleged assaults spanning from 2001 to 2020. Foppoli served as mayor of Windsor, a town of roughly 27,000 in California's wine country, and was a member of the Active 20-30 Club, a social organization whose Santa Rosa chapter the jury also held liable. For nearly two decades, according to the plaintiffs, Foppoli operated without accountability.
The Active 20-30 Club's $2 million liability finding raises its own questions. The jury determined the organization bore responsibility for at least one of the assaults, suggesting the club's environment or negligence played a role. Neither the club nor its representatives were quoted in the available reporting.
Foppoli's defense attorney has signaled a fight over the verdict, citing the excluded witness as grounds for a mistrial motion. Whether that motion succeeds will determine if the $13 million judgment stands or the case returns to trial. The punitive damages hearing on Tuesday could add substantially to the total. And Abraham's lawsuit, still months from trial, means Foppoli's courtroom calendar is far from clear.
The broader pattern of Democrats questioning their own party's direction has played out largely in ideological terms, arguments over policy, tone, and political strategy. Foppoli's case is not about ideology. It is about whether institutions, from local party structures to law enforcement, failed to protect women from a man who held public trust.
Seven women spent years and their own resources to get a jury to hear what prosecutors would not bring to trial. The jury listened, and it sided with them, to the tune of $13 million, with more possibly on the way. When the criminal justice system declines to act, accountability does not disappear. It just gets more expensive, takes longer, and falls entirely on the shoulders of the people who were harmed.
