SAN JOSE – Shannon O’Connor, the former Los Gatos woman charged with running unchecked alcohol-fueled parties for her teen son and his friends – during which alleged sexual assaults occurred between the minors – is speaking out from jail custody to defend herself with her criminal trial resuming in the new year.
SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA – OCTOBER 20: Shannon O’Connor, the Los Gatos woman charged with throwing drunken and sex-filled parties for her son and local teens attends an arraignment hearing in San Jose, Calif., on Wednesday, October 20, 2021. (Anda Chu/Bay Area News Group) Anda Chu/Bay Area News Group
O’Connor, 51, reached out to this news organization from the Elmwood women’s jail in Milpitas to object to her public characterization, portray herself as a scapegoat for the teens’ illicit behavior, and accuse the court system of hindering her.
“They were given immunity to point the finger at me so they wouldn’t get in trouble,” she said during a pair of 15-minute calls from jail on Dec. 23. “That’s what this is.”
“I’m not saying I’m not at all to blame whatsoever. It was my alcohol that they got drunk off of. It was my home that they were at. I’ve never said that I was not aware of any alcohol. I’ve never stated that. I did become aware of it. I feel responsible.”
She specified that responsibility was a failure to sufficiently intervene in what she says was a scheme in which the teens — many of whom are now testifying for the prosecution — smuggled alcohol among themselves or took it from their parents’ liquor cabinets. O’Connor said she tried to provide a respite for youths struggling with the lockdown measures of the pandemic in 2020 but lost control of the situation.
“It was happening at my house. It was happening at other people’s homes, and it was starting to happen more and more frequently,” O’Connor said. “Teenagers are sneaky. They find their way to things. You know, as soon as you close that door, you’re not 100% positive what’s going to go on … They were punished and grounded on numerous occasions, but they still got into it, and there was really no stopping it.”
Her self-portrayal — as a mother, overwhelmed by the pandemic, with an ill-fated plan to provide a safe space for the teens — starkly contrasts the 20 child endangerment-related felony counts, and 43 misdemeanor counts covering furnishing alcohol to minors, charged against her in a 2023 grand jury indictment that superseded her original charges in 2021. The trial held opening statements in early December.
A parent of one of the Jane Does listed as a teenage victim in the charges called O’Connor’s claims “unbelievable.”
“She’s a master manipulator and she’s looking to make this sound less intense or less troubling than it absolutely was,” said the parent, whose identity is being withheld to protect Doe’s privacy. “She absolutely pushed, shared, purchased alcohol, showed these children how to drink like rock stars, and then when they were incredibly inebriated, absolutely directed them like a movie producer. What they should do and with whom. She is a despicable kind of female adult character who manipulated a lot of young children, many of whom had zero experience with dating or any kind of sexuality with the opposite sex.”
O’Connor is accused of facilitating the parties over roughly two years — both at her home and at far-flung lodges and hotels — taking alcohol orders for the minors, and repeatedly inserting herself in the teens’ social and sexual lives, including pressuring the girls to engage in sexual activity with the boys. Prosecutors contend that she is criminally liable for multiple instances in which, with O’Connor’s encouragement, inebriated girls were sexually assaulted by often equally inebriated boys.
The parties aroused suspicion from other parents after teens began coming home inexplicably injured or heavily intoxicated. An impending police investigation coincided with O’Connor moving with her children to Idaho, where she was arrested.
The criminal charges contain a series of accounts including one girl describing being intoxicated and nearly drowning in a hot tub as she was sexually penetrated, with O’Connor present. Another infamous story describes a drunken joyride in which a teen boy suffered a serious head injury after falling from an SUV reportedly driven by O’Connor in the Los Gatos High School parking lot; she then allegedly posed as the boy’s mother to ward off an investigating police officer.
O’Connor claims her grand jury indictment was built in part on seized cell phone records that cover communications beyond the scope of a search warrant, and said she is seeking a mistrial. She also said trial Judge Elizabeth Peterson “seems to be very biased” for granting prosecution evidentiary motions filed after the start of trial testimony.
“That’s really what I wanted to get out there,” O’Connor said.
The Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office declined to respond directly to her remarks.
“The defendant stands accused of serious crimes against children, and that case is receiving evidence and witness testimony in an ongoing jury trial,” the office said in a statement. “We will continue to try the case in Courtroom 39 at the Hall of Justice and not elsewhere, despite the comments of the defendant outside of court.”
Prosecutors are also citing communications in group text chats and Snapchat messages that outline O’Connor’s fascination with the sex lives of her son’s friend circle, dating back to before they were teens and continuing through when her son began attending Los Gatos High.
In testimony given Dec. 17, a prosecution witness identified as Jane Doe 11 said O’Connor asked girls, some as young as 12, about their budding sexual interests and proclivities. Doe 11 testified that as the friend group got older, the questions, in hindsight, appeared designed to “normalize sex” among the youths, and escalated to O’Connor allegedly telling a girl dating her son that he could become suicidal if she did not satisfy him sexually.
In her Dec. 23 call, O’Connor called that a distortion, pointing to cross-examination in which Doe 11 acknowledged that O’Connor had not specifically pressured her into drinking or sex. She claims the conversations had a more innocuous intent.
“I’m trying to be a concerned mother. I knew that these kids were drinking. I knew these kids were having sexual relations, whatever that may be. I was trying to make sure that they were being safe. People can look at that a few different ways,” she said. “I’d love for the whole truth to come out with that, OK? Instead of me looking like some crazy sick person. Because that’s what’s kind of coming out so far.”
In 2023, O’Connor explored a potential guilty plea but pulled back after Judge Peterson informed her the resulting sentence would be 17 years. The indictment, secured a few months later, upped the number of charges from 39 to 63, and her potential maximum prison sentence to over 30 years. A conviction on all counts would also make her a registered sex offender.
“When she says she was trying to stop this, I don’t believe that at all because she was actively picking kids up in the middle of the night when we all thought they were sleeping in their beds in our homes,” Doe’s parent said. “Many parents in our community know that this was not what happened to our individual children because we’ve discussed it with them for years now, and they’ve shared it directly with the DA.”
The parent added, “She left this community because people like myself and others were on to her and people like myself were sharing it with other parents to protect the community and the children.
There was some overlap between O’Connor’s version of events and the prosecution’s portrayal of her taking a strong hand in her son’s personal life. She said her efforts to support her son’s social success were misguided in hindsight.
“If I had told their parents, there was a good chance that nobody would want to hang out with him anymore, and I made the wrong decision,” she said. “I leaned more towards that than doing the responsible thing as a parent and telling other parents, and I’ll be the first one to admit that.”
The trial, which paused Dec. 19 and is set to resume Monday, is expected to take several more weeks, with Judge Peterson noting in court documents it could last into March.
“It’s really unbelievable to me that after five years, this woman … still has no understanding or acknowledgment, no self-realization of the damage she did to these individual boys and girls, to her own sons and to the community,” the parent said. “The whole thing has been a living nightmare for all of us.”