SAN JOSE — A verdict has been reached in the three-month trial of a Los Gatos woman accused of organizing alcohol-fueled parties for her young son and his friends, which authorities say provided a safe place for dangerous drinking and sexually assaulting drunken girls.
Shannon O’Connor, 51, has spent four and a half years behind bars in the Santa Clara County jail as her case has struggled with lengthy delays, changes in attorneys, subsequent criminal trials that have added more charges, and, since December, weeks of testimony from dozens of witnesses.
The notice that the decision was reached went out on Wednesday morning. The decision is expected to be read in the morning.
Jurors went through 20 counts of child endangerment — including two accused of sexual battery by a lawyer for allowing the reported victims to become incredibly intoxicated — and 43 counts of misdemeanors, mostly allegations that he provided alcohol to children during more than a week of interviews.
O’Connor did not testify in her own defense, but she did offer a defense when in December, during a break in the trial, she contacted the news agency from Elmwood Women’s Prison in Milpitas to set up a rare public defense about criminal charges. He objected to his portrayal until then and said that he is being used as a criminal in the illegal behavior of the youth and that the children are conspiring to accuse him in order to cover up their misbehavior.
In the prison program of Dec. 23 and The Mercury News, she accepted some responsibility for the parties, but only through the lens of a concerned mother who knew but failed to keep up with the tactics of the youth and, in retrospect, wrongly tried to keep the parties from getting wide notice.
But O’Connor did not mention, either in court or in public, a number of texts and communications between her and several girls who were in love or were friends with her then twelve-year-old son and his friends who were thought to be the main beneficiaries of the parties, which took place secretly either in O’Connor’s home or in houses far away from the dormitories. Several youths who testified at the 2023 criminal grand juries and during the trial recalled that O’Connor often participated in group meetings where he would take alcohol orders for youths and get matching liquors and beers at the next gathering.
The relationship began during her son’s middle school years, and prosecutors portrayed O’Connor as wanting to be a “cool mom” to bolster her son’s social status, a strange pursuit that only grew when the teenager began attending Los Gatos High School.
Apart from neglecting their drinking, O’Connor is said to have favored the girls’ romantic and sexual lives through text messages, “normalising” sex between teenagers in the circle. Another teenager testified that O’Connor pressured a girl into sleeping with his son by warning that he would kill himself if the girl did not satisfy him sexually.
Permissiveness and sexual encouragement is reflected in anecdotes such as when one of the boys recounts that O’Connor was present when he sexually assaulted a girl in a hot tub. The little girl revealed that she was so drunk that she was struggling with her head above water when they met her. Some reports described O’Connor as appearing distressed when a drunk girl at one of the parties was apparently sexually assaulted.
In a prison interview, O’Connor said that the messages between him and the girls were intercepted by investigators and authorities, and he said that he was trying to communicate with them at their level with the aim of encouraging them to be safe when drinking and having sex.
Although O’Connor vehemently denied the allegations, authorities pointed to numerous instances where he took part in rackets that resulted in injuries to many young people due to alcohol intoxication. One young man recounts nearly drowning in the bathtub after a night of heavy drinking. In another incident, a young boy reportedly suffered serious head injuries after he was drunk and fell out of an SUV while partying in a high school parking lot with O’Connor allegedly behind the wheel.
In a recent episode, the teenager recalled that she pretended to be the mother of the injured boy in order to avoid suspicion from the responding police officer, which is one of the many claims of O’Connor trying to cover up the whole motive. Apart from the allegations that he ordered the young people to hide in a tree across the street to avoid being found by her husband, the reports grew to include text messages, which were examined and revealed by the authorities, including O’Connor appearing to threaten the girls who he suspected of breaking the secret.
But despite those efforts, some parents are still wary after teenagers come home mysteriously injured or drunk. As that suspicion grew with the free speech about him, O’Connor moved with his children to Idaho, where he was arrested in 2021.
