SRJC employee on leave amid investigation into allegations of inappropriate contact with a minor

A longtime Santa Rosa Junior College Theatre Arts department production specialist has been put on paid administrative leave after allegations surfaced last week that he engaged with inappropriate online contact with someone who presented themself as a minor.

Ari Poppers, who has worked in that role at the college since 2008, was put on administrative leave Friday, the same day school officials were made aware of a Facebook post outlining communication Poppers allegedly had with someone who told him they were 16 years old, college spokeswoman Erin Bricker said.

“The Facebook posts came to our attention on Friday morning and shortly thereafter our SRJC Police Department contacted (Santa Rosa Police Department), who was already aware. Our police department was cooperating with SRPD by that same afternoon,” Bricker said in an email.

“Santa Rosa Junior College police is assisting and cooperating” with Santa Rosa Police “to share information between departments,” Bricker said, adding that “the primary investigation is staying with the Santa Rosa Police Department.”

Bricker said putting an employee on leave is “standard practice whenever we are going to be looking into an accusation like this.”

Poppers could not be reached for comment on Monday.

The online exchange, sexual in nature, was first reported Sunday by the student newspaper The Oak Leaf, and was allegedly conducted between Poppers and someone posing as a 16-year-old girl. The person behind the fake persona, Lexi, was in fact a 25-year-old man who had suspicions about Poppers’ behavior, The Oak Leaf reported.

In a telephone interview Monday with The Press Democrat, the man, who declined to provide his name, said he was using the fake Facebook account that Poppers sent inappropriate messages to, despite him claiming he told Poppers multiple times that he was speaking with a 16-year-old girl named Lexi.

“I could make you feel wonderful things you’d never imagined possible,” according to screenshots of one message from a person with Poppers’ name to the fake account used by the man.

After multiple sexually explicit messages that were sent over the course of a few hours on Thursday, the man behind the fake account then called Poppers and told him to “get the help you need” before Poppers hung up, the person behind the fake account said in the interview.

The man that Poppers thought was Lexi then contacted the Santa Rosa Police Department to report the online exchange, though he did not provide his name to a detective he spoke with, the man said. He did not want to be named because he feared retaliation from Poppers, he said.

“I was appalled,” the man using the fake account said in the Press Democrat interview. “I don’t want to see the guy’s life be ruined but at the same time, I think the community should be aware.”

Santa Rosa Police Sgt. Hiroshi Yaguchi, who oversees the department’s sexual assault and domestic violence investigations unit, said in an email that the department was unable to substantiate reports that a 25-year-old man was the person behind the account as of Monday afternoon, though that was an aspect of the case that a detective assigned to the case was working on.

Yaguchi could not answer questions related to which potential crimes police were investigating as of Monday afternoon, saying the detective was seeking additional information about the allegations, he said.

School officials would not disclose Monday whether Poppers has been the focus of other disciplinary investigations in his tenure at the college.

“We are aware of the concerning allegations made on Facebook,” Leslie McCauley, chairwoman of the Department of Theatre and Fashion said in an email Monday. “Personnel matters and allegations of this sort are confidential and are handled by Human Resources, which has opened an investigation in this case. SRJC is taking the matter seriously and is taking action. I cannot comment further due to the confidential matter of the investigation.”

Staff Writer Nashelly Chavez contributed to this story. You can reach Staff Writer Kerry Benefield at 707-526-8671 or kerry.benefield@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @benefield.