Inset: Shannon O’Connor (Santa Clara DA’s Office). Background: The Los Gatos mansion where she threw alcohol-fueled parties for teens (KNTV).
A California woman was convicted Wednesday of throwing alcohol-fueled parties for underage teens in her Los Gatos mansion, where prosecutors said she urged them to engage in non-consensual sex while she watched.
Shannon O’Connor, who also came to be known as “Party Mom,” was found guilty of multiple felonies, including two counts of sexual penetration, 13 counts of child endangerment, and one count of dissuading a witness, authorities announced.
O’Connor, 51, was convicted of 48 criminal charges total, including misdemeanors.
According to a news release from the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office, O’Connor provided kids, mostly 14- and 15-year-olds, with Fireball whiskey, vodka, and condoms while discouraging the victims from telling their parents or police about the parties. In some cases, she also actively dissuaded the teens from seeking medical assistance when partygoers “passed out in their own vomit.”
“This defendant not only didn’t protect these children, she endangered their safety, coordinated their sexual assaults, and she tried to get them not to tell,” District Attorney Jeff Rosen said in a statement announcing the verdict. “These brave kids came forward to tell the truth about what happened and to put a stop to it.”
O’Connor used social media platforms to communicate with students at Los Gatos High School, where two of her sons were enrolled. She often used Snapchat or text messages, telling teens to leave their homes “in the middle of the night” and come to her house where they could drink alcohol that she had purchased for them.
At one party, O’Connor handed a teenager a condom and pushed him into a room with another drunk teen, prosecutors said.
During a New Year’s Eve party with about five 14-year-olds, authorities said she watched and laughed as a drunk teen sexually battered a young girl in bed.
In another case, she allegedly brought a drunk teen boy into a bedroom at her home where an intoxicated 14-year-old girl was lying in bed.
Afterward, the girl asked O’Connor: “Why did you leave me in there with him? Like why did you like do that? Like you knew like what he was going to do to me,” authorities said.
The mother was also accused of allowing a minor to drive her SUV in a parking lot while two other kids were hanging onto the back of the vehicle. One of the two teens hanging onto the back fell off and was knocked unconscious.
“It was a long wait. It was a long trial. There was a lot of hardship and pain, and suffering. But with the jury’s verdict today, there is now justice,” Rosen said outside the courthouse Wednesday, per The Mercury News. “It’s important to recognize the victims who testified and their families, their parents who supported them during this very difficult ordeal. This case does not happen if the children do not come forward and stop what this defendant was doing.”
O’Connor has been in detention at the Santa Clara County Jail since her arrest over four years ago.
A date for O’Connor’s sentencing hearing has not been set. She faces more than 30 years in prison.
