A Northern California woman faces at least 30 years in prison after being convicted of 48 felony and misdemeanor counts related to alcohol-fueled parties she threw where she forced teenage girls to have sex with boys who helped them get drunk.
Shannon Marie O’Connor, 51, known as Los Gatos’ “party mom,” was found guilty Wednesday of 63 counts in a Santa Clara County court in San Jose.
Those charges were related to child endangerment and misdemeanor sexual battery, as well as two counts of sexual misconduct.
Jeff Rosen, the Santa Clara County district attorney, said at a press conference Wednesday afternoon that O’Connor will face at least 30 years in prison pending a jury trial on March 11.
The final sentencing is scheduled for March 26.
“After many years and many victims, today justice has been served,” Rosen said on the courthouse steps. “It was a long wait, it was a long trial. There was a lot of difficulty and pain and suffering, but with the judge’s decision today, there is justice.”
O’Connor’s attorney, Stephen Prekoski, said his client was “crushed [and] I am very disappointed.”
“I don’t think I can say it any better than that,” he said at a press conference.
Shannon Marie O’Connor was found guilty of 48 of the 63 charges she faced.
(Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office)
O’Connor was indicted by a grand jury in November 2023 on 20 felony counts and 43 misdemeanor counts.
The parties and incidents that gave rise to the charges occurred from June 1, 2020, to May 3, 2021, according to the criminal complaint.
Prosecutors say O’Connor gave her son and his friends and other partygoers, most of them ages 13 to 15, so much alcohol that they “vomited, couldn’t stand, passed out,” according to court documents.
O’Connor was arrested in Idaho after moving there in June 2021, according to the district attorney’s office. He was extradited to California, where he was initially indicted on 39 counts in October 2021, including 12 counts.
Christina Hanks, a Santa Clara County sheriff’s investigator, noted in the report that children who were “extremely intoxicated” at events where O’Connor served alcohol would be encouraged by the defendant to “engage in sexual intercourse with each other.”
Hanks described several incidents where children were left in dangerous situations. A sober 13- to 14-year-old girl was asked to babysit a “highly intoxicated” 14-year-old boy at a house party in the summer of 2020, according to court documents.
The boy passed out “covered in his own vomit” and then woke up vomiting profusely, court documents said. The defendant also advised calling an ambulance if the girl requested one, according to the documents.
O’Connor rented a cabin in Santa Cruz for her son’s birthday in early October 2020, according to court documents, saying she asked a group of her friends over Snapchat “what kind of alcohol you want.”
The drunken boys urinated in the area, stumbled into the yard and tripped and fell in the yard, the documents said. The homeowner reported $9,000 in damage.
In December 2020, O’Connor gave an intoxicated boy a condom and pushed him into bed with an intoxicated girl, who locked herself in the bathroom out of fear, court documents said.
In one incident, O’Connor encouraged a girl to perform oral sex on a boy, and in another episode he led an intoxicated boy into a room with an intoxicated girl, and the man penetrated the girl with his fingers, according to the documents.
O’Connor bought vodka and Fireball whiskey, provided condoms and encouraged teenagers not to tell their parents or police about the gangs or to call for help when one of the victims passed out from their vomit, prosecutors said.
In one incident, he allowed a toddler to drive his sports car in the Los Gatos High School parking lot while two other teenagers clung to the back; one fell unconscious, the district attorney said.
Prekoski, O’Connor’s attorney, said the defense attorneys have an uphill battle to fight. Neither he nor his client believed that all of the alcohol consumed by the youth was supplied directly by O’Connor, but rather could easily have been taken from his home.
Prekoski said he disagreed with the district attorney’s view, which was, “everything is bad, every time, as bad as you can imagine.”
