Mom charged in Los Gatos teen party scandal speaks out mid-trial ...Middle East

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 set to resume in the new year.

O’Connor, 51, reached out to this news organization last week 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 stacking the deck against 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 her failure to intervene in what she says was a relentless 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 to accusations that led to 20 child endangerment-related felony counts, and 43 misdemeanor counts covering furnishing alcohol to minors, charged against her in a 2023 grand jury indictment. She was originally charged by the authorities in 2021, but the grand jury indictment superseded those charges, bypassing a preliminary hearing and sending the case toward trial, which held opening statements in early December. 

A parent of one of the several Jane Does listed as a teenage victim in the criminal charges called O’Connor’s claims “unbelievable” and not aligned with reality.

“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.”

The charges allege that O’Connor facilitated the parties over roughly two years, took alcohol orders for the minors, and repeatedly inserted herself in the teens’ social and sexual lives to the point where she pressured the girls to engage in sexual activity with the boys. Combined with the booze-fueled atmosphere, 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 are underpinned by 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, revealed by the police investigation and subsequent grand jury testimony, involved a teen boy who 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 investigation by a responding police officer.

O’Connor claims that her indictment was built in part on seized cell phone records that cover communications beyond the scope of a key search warrant, and said she is seeking a mistrial on the grounds that the grand jury was tainted by illegally introduced evidence. She also said trial Judge Elizabeth Peterson “seems to be very biased” for granting evidentiary motions for the prosecution that were 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, which is prosecuting O’Connor, 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 have pointed to an array of what they describe as incriminating communications through group text chats and Snapchat messages that outline O’Connor’s extraordinary 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 – who was not a charged victim but was called upon to help illustrate the troubling environment they allege O’Connor created – said O’Connor asked girls, some as young as 12, about their budding sexual interests and proclivities. Doe 11 would later testify 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 who was dating her son that he could become suicidal if she did not satisfy him sexually.

In her Dec. 23 call with this news organization, she called that characterization 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 tone and 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 told her the resulting sentence would be 17 years, just shy of the 20-year maximum term. The indictment, a few months later, increased the number of criminal charges from 39 to 63 and upped her potential maximum prison sentence to over 30 years. A conviction on all counts would also subject her to sex offender registration requirements.

O’Connor’s characterization of events also flies in the face of a multitude of accounts from the charged victims, other teens in the periphery of the parties, and parents who all grew suspicious and told authorities that she aggressively pressured the teens to keep the parties secret.

“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.”

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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, and contributed to her decision not to inform other parents of the drinking going on.

“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 for O’Connor is expected to take several more weeks, with Judge Peterson noting in court documents the prospect of it lasting into March. Proceedings have been dark since Dec. 19 for the holiday break, and are set to resume Monday.

“It’s really unbelievable to me that after five years, this woman who did this to all these young kids … they’ve had years of therapy to deal with and will probably deal with for the rest of their lives, 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.”

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