Party mom denied bail, judge issues protective orders for alleged victims
Shannon O'Connor is arraigned on 39 felony and misdemeanor charges
A Santa Clara County judge on Wednesday denied bail for the woman who gained national notoriety after she was arrested and charged with throwing alcohol- and sex-filled parties for Los Gatos teens, and issued 15 protective orders for the alleged victims, including one of her teenage sons.
Shannon O’Connor, known by many locally as Shannon Bruga, was arraigned in a San Jose courtroom on 39 felony and misdemeanor charges and ordered back to the Elmwood women’s jail. The alleged crimes include child endangerment, child molestation, sexual assault and contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
O’Connor did not enter a plea Wednesday, and her next scheduled court hearing for the charges is Dec. 17. She faces up to 20 years and eight months in prison if convicted on all counts.
In court, Deputy District Attorney Rebekah Wise restated a motion seeking that bail be withheld from O’Connor, saying there was “clear and convincing evidence that if the defendant were to be released to the public, there is likely going to be great bodily harm to the victims in this case and to members of the public.”
Wise also argued that O’Connor is a flight risk due to her wealth and the potential prison time the charges carry.
Afterward, District Attorney Jeff Rosen, who attended the arraignment, said allegations in Idaho — where O’Connor had relocated and where she was arrested — suggesting that the fact that she continued to throw illicit teen parties was a factor in his office seeking to disqualify O’Connor from being eligible for bail, which until Wednesday had been set at $900,000.
Judge Johnny Gogo granted the request but did so without prejudice, telling defense attorney Sam Polverino he could request a hearing to evaluate O’Connor’s bail eligibility at a later date.
A mother of one of the girls who reported being
sexually assaulted at the parties said victims’ parents, who watched the arraignment in both the court gallery and via Zoom, were dreading the possibility that O’Connor could be freed.
“We truly all feel she is a threat to the community: We experienced it, our children experienced it, and our community is not safe while she is out on the street,” said the mother, whose name is being withheld to protect the identity of her child. “We are very grateful that the judge decided this today and didn’t prolong this.”
Polverino appeared incensed at the way the arraignment came together and what he said was the hour-and-a-half notice he got about prosecutors’ no-bail motion. He argued in court that a decision to deny his client bail flew in the face of the state Supreme Court’s recent “Humphrey decision” that compelled trial-court judges to enforce high standards for determining someone’s threat to the public in revoking bail.
Prosecutors’ no-bail request, Polverino said, was “inconsistent with due process and a denial of my client’s rights.” He also criticized the decision for being based solely on prosecutors’ summary of their investigation rather than independently assessed evidence.
“You’re putting my client and I in a tight spot here,” he told the judge.
After the hearing, Polverino doubled down on what he said in court.
“I am saddened and shocked at the court’s ruling today,” he said in a statement. “Everyone is
entitled to a fair hearing. We were deprived of one today.”
Gogo also signed off on 15 no-contact orders representing underage victims, many of whom gave accounts that comprised the foundation of the criminal charges. One of the orders is for O’Connor’s elder son.
Rosen praised teens who cooperated with investigators, saying, “The children’s actions … stand in sharp contrast to the defendant’s irresponsible, reckless and criminal actions.”
O’Connor was extradited from Ada County, Idaho, where she was initially arrested in a Boise suburb on Oct. 9. She arrived in the Bay Area on Tuesday and was booked into the Elmwood women’s jail in Milpitas. Following her arrest in Idaho, she was held in jail on both $900,000 bail and an extradition hold based on the Santa Clara County arrest warrant. Her bail in Santa Clara County had been $1 million before the arraignment, and it remains unclear why the bail amount increased.
She is also under investigation in Idaho on allegations she continued to hold illicit teen parties after Ada County authorities say they found that 12 teens were at her home — many having stayed overnight — when they served the Bay Area arrest warrant. She moved to the Boise area with her two teen sons at the end of the past school year, and the home Los Gatos home she shared with her husband, tech executive Robert Amaral, is on the market with a $4.7 million listing price.
O’Connor had apparently been known in some Los Gatos circles as “the cool mom” since her older son was in middle school and elicited suspicion from other parents. The investigation headed by the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office contends that her illegal parties spanned from June 2020, when her elder son was 14, to May 2021 and included at least a half-dozen large events and several smaller gatherings — involving mostly 14- and 15-year-olds — primarily at her Los Gatos house but also at houses in Santa Cruz and Lake Tahoe.
A prevailing element of several of the parties, as some attending teens told investigators, was that O’Connor encouraged the teens to have sex or engage in sex acts, with the minors in various states of inebriation suggesting that many of the sexual interactions were not consensual. She also reportedly handed out condoms.
Prosecutors also contend that O’Connor aggressively enforced secrecy among the teens, helping them sneak out of their homes at night and bullying at least one girl she suspected of talking about the parties to outsiders. The investigation also indicated that she and teens worked to keep her husband unaware of what they were doing.
Another mother of a reported victim, who also attended the court hearing Wednesday, told this news organization that “the whole reason why our family came forward was to make sure this doesn’t happen to another family. Letting her out would be very concerning to our family, and (also) what would happen to others.”
In addition to the 39 party-related charges filed against O’Connor on Oct. 8, prosecutors in Santa Clara County filed three grand theft charges alleging she racked up $120,000 in unauthorized expenses on her former employer’s company credit cards, including payments for limo rides, clothing and alcohol delivered to her home. The employer, Aruba Networks, internally flagged the charges and, after firing O’Connor, referred their investigation to Santa Clara police.