Former Cal Poly administrator is accused of lewd acts with 6-year-old in a hot tub
A former Cal Poly administrator accused of committing a lewd and lascivious act on his 6-year-old step-granddaughter in a hot tub will face trial, San Luis Obispo County Superior Court Judge Jesse Marino ruled on Thursday.
On Aug. 27, the San Luis Obispo County District Attorney’s Office charged former Cal Poly associate vice president and former Bike SLO County executive director Richard Edward Ellison, 69, with committing a lewd and lascivious act on a child under 14 on March 30, 2025, at his Arroyo Grande home.
Thursday’s preliminary hearing saw two witnesses — San Luis Obispo County District Attorney’s Office investigator Julia Tatarian and San Luis Obispo County sheriff’s Deputy Kara Dickel — take the stand for questioning by District Attorney Dan Dow and defense attorney Carrie Winters.
Dow called Tatarian to the stand to testify about her Sept. 29 interview with the mother of the alleged victim, who was not present in court on Thursday.
The Tribune is withholding the mother’s name to protect the privacy of her daughter.
Girl and mother were in SLO County for baby shower
Jane Doe was 6 years old when she and her mother visited California from their home in Colorado for a baby shower for her mother’s sister two days after arriving on March 28, Tatarian said.
Following the baby shower at the grandparents’ home, the group had dinner and Jane Doe asked to go into the hot tub, Tatarian said. Ellison, Jane Doe’s step-grandfather, accompanied Jane Doe in the hot tub because the girl’s mother did not bring a swimsuit on the trip.
According to Tatarian’s testimony, the mother said Ellison had had “a couple glasses of wine” and appeared to doze off, before he was woken to take Jane Doe to the hot tub while the mother stayed inside with her mother to clean up dinner.
When Jane Doe came back into the house to get ready for bed, she told her mother, “Hey, Grandpa told me that we have a secret,” Tatarian recounted from her interview.
After questioning from her mother, Jane Doe said Ellison had “pulled down his pants and exposed his penis to her” while in the hot tub, Tatarian said. Jane Doe further told her mother that Ellison did not touch Jane Doe during the interaction, and her mother proceeded with the evening so as not to “put any thoughts in her head,” Tatarian said.
The following morning, the mother confronted Ellison while getting ready to go to breakfast.
“(Ellison said) the day prior, victim had been making comments about (Ellison’s) underwear and how she could see them when they were riding bikes together,” Tatarian said. “He also said that victim was poking him when they were in the hot tub and trying to grab at his shorts.”
When asked if he had exposed himself to Jane Doe, Ellison “kind of shrugged and didn’t really answer the question directly,” did not explicitly deny having exposed himself and “danced around the question,” in the mother’s words, Tatarian said.
After the two returned to Colorado, the victim’s father spoke with his daughter about the incident and later submitted a tip via a law enforcement hotline.
Ellison later sent a letter to Jane Doe’s mother, which was submitted into evidence by the prosecution.
“The defendant wrote a handwritten letter, presumably in his own handwriting, mailed it to the family, apologizing, taking responsibility without giving specificity of the act that he did,” Dow said. “It’s clearly an admission by the defendant that something wholly inappropriate happened.”
“He was relating it to his consumption of alcohol and gave a commitment that he would never drink alcohol again around the children,” Dow continued. “He was very sorry about hurting (Jane Doe), he would never want to hurt her, but he knows that he did (hurt her) as well as the family.”
Winters questioned Tatarian on whether Jane Doe’s father’s questioning of his daughter about what happened may have put ideas in her head or influenced her recollection of the events at her step-grandfather’s house.
Tatarian said Jane Doe’s father asked if she had touched Ellison’s penis, which she said she had, and asked what it had felt like, to which Jane Doe replied that there was a “hard part and a soft part.”
Responding to Dow, Tatarian said Jane Doe had told her father that Jane Doe had been poking Ellison in the chest and nipples in the hot tub, and asked him to show her his private parts.
Dow asked if Ellison had tried to dissuade his step-granddaughter from that line of questioning, to which Tatarian responded no.
Colorado police investigated allegations
Dow then called Dickel to the witness stand, questioning her about her investigation of the alleged crime.
Dickel contacted the Lafayette Police Department in Colorado and scheduled a child forensic interview through the Blue Sky Ridge Child Advocacy Center in Boulder. She then recounted the child forensic interview, which she viewed for the investigation.
During the forensic interview, Jane Doe said her father had given her a safety talk about the boundaries around private parts that she should be aware of, but the girl went quiet when asked if she’d ever been around someone who was “being bad with their body,” Dickel said.
In the interview Jane Doe recounted two instances of going into the hot tub with her step-grandfather, Dickel said. On the second occasion, the night of the baby shower, she confirmed that he had removed his swim trunks and showed her his private parts.
Jane Doe also said she had seen her step-grandfather changing his clothes prior to the hot tub incident while she was hiding under the bed in Ellison’s bedroom and asked him to show her his private parts, to which he replied that he would show her later in the hot tub, Dickel said.
“She stated when she saw (Ellison’s penis) when she was under the bed, it was just hanging there and when she saw it in the jacuzzi, it was sticking up,” Dickel said.
In the hot tub, Jane Doe asked her step-grandfather several questions about his genitals, which she could see under the hot tub’s water because he had turned the tub lights on, Dickel said.
Jane Doe also told the child forensic interviewer that she had touched Ellison’s penis with two fingers, Dickel said.
Dickel said the child forensic investigator asked Jane Doe to mark on a diagram where the male anatomy was located, and the girl drew a red line pointing upwards from the genitals to indicate the position of Ellison’s genitals when she saw them in the hot tub.
Jane Doe told the investigator the same thing that she had told her mother the night of the incident, that he had said to keep it “our little secret,” and that she had told her mother because “in her family, they don’t keep secrets,” Dickel said.
In Winters’ questioning of Dickel, she asked Dickel to recall Jane Doe’s description of Ellison’s swimwear while in the hot tub.
“The way the victim described it in the child forensic interview was she stated they were blue trunks, but when she was asked to describe them, she stated that they were blue like the bottoms from a girl’s two-piece swimsuit,” Dickel said, which she interpreted as meaning Ellison was wearing a Speedo, not trunks.
Winters asked Dickel if it was possible that the tight-fitting Speedo-style bathing suit may have been holding Ellison’s genitalia in place, which may have shown Jane Doe the outline without actually exposing him.
Winters further questioned Dickel on several details of the incident in the hot tub, including whether Ellison told Jane Doe not to touch his private parts and what the victim’s father had told her about touching other people’s private parts.
“I recall in my report that I stated that (Jane Doe) had said that (Ellison) told her to not touch anybody else’s private parts and to not be as expressive,” Dickel said. “I do not have in my report that he told her not to touch his privates.”
Once witness testimonies had been heard, Judge Jesse Marino decided there was enough evidence go to trial and set Ellison’s next hearing for May 12.
This story was originally published April 2, 2026 at 4:05 PM.
