Jailed Los Gatos ‘party mom’ to spend holidays behind bars
Her alleged victims plan to speak out against any bail motion
A Los Gatos mom accused of hosting drunken parties for her son and his high school friends where teen girls sometimes allegedly were sexually assaulted will spend the holidays in jail but has a second chance next month to seek bail and freedom while awaiting trial.
Shannon O’Connor, 47, locked up since her October arrest, has yet to enter a plea to multiple charges of felony child endangerment and molestation as well as misdemeanor counts of furnishing liquor to teenagers. She said nothing during a brief court appearance Dec. 17, but her lawyer said he will file a motion for bail, and a hearing was set for Jan. 18.
The thought of O’Connor — who prosecutors said threatened teens who talked about the parties — posting bail and walking free was chilling to some of the alleged girl victims and their parents who watched the proceedings from the courtroom gallery, the first time many had seen her since her arrest.
One of the girls’ mothers said O’Connor smirked at her and her daughter as she entered the courtroom. The woman said that the parents and teens would argue next month against allowing O’Connor a chance to bail out of jail.
“There was a lot of concern and emotion,” said the mother of one of the alleged victims, who is not being named to protect the girl’s privacy. “We all feel very strongly that she should not be released on bail given the nature of her crimes. Everyone is afraid of what this woman can do and has done. She’s a danger to society and to minors.”
O’Connor had been scheduled to enter a plea Friday. But her first lawyer, Sam Polverino, learned he had a conflict of interest after receiving a list of alleged victims and had to withdraw. Her new lawyer, Brian Madden, said he had not yet received all the information about the case from prosecutors and needed more time.
“I’m really not in any position to make a comment on the case,” Madden told reporters outside the courthouse afterward. Regarding a bail motion, which he plans to file by Jan. 13, he added only that he thinks she should be allowed a chance to be out of custody.
O’Connor’s husband and sons weren’t in the courtroom, and it did not appear anyone else attended on her behalf.
Judge Johnny Gogo set a March 4 hearing for O’Connor to enter a plea.
O’Connor faces 39 criminal counts involving 15 alleged teen victims for a series of parties and gatherings from June 2020 through last May. According to court filings from prosecutors, O’Connor would arrange through text and Snapchat messages for her son’s teen friends to sneak out of their homes late at night and drive them to her spacious, ranch-style home in the hills overlooking Silicon Valley. She told them to keep the parties a secret.
There, she gave her older son and the other teens — high school freshmen at the time — access to “excessive amounts of alcohol,” and several wound up vomiting or passing out. She also allegedly arranged other benders at rented homes in Santa Cruz and the Lake Tahoe area. One boy allegedly suffered a concussion and was so drunk he almost drowned in a bathtub.
At several of the parties, once the teen boys and girls were drunk, O’Connor allegedly “encouraged them to engage in sexual activity with each other,” some of which was “nonconsensual.”
O’Connor had sought bail at her Oct. 20 initial court appearance, but prosecutors objected and Judge Gogo agreed to keep her in custody without bail at least until her next hearing.
Deputy District Attorney Rebekah Wise, who’s prosecuting the case, argued in a court motion that O’Connor poses both a flight risk and a danger to the teen victims and their families, alleging she “harassed” and “threatened to spread rumors about” teens who talked.
In April, O’Connor allegedly pulled her car alongside a teen girl who’d had a falling out with her, and stared at her.
O’Connor and her husband were in the process of moving to Idaho, where she was arrested, and where one of the alleged victims lives. On Dec. 10, she and her husband completed a $4.6 million sale of the 5,100-square-foot, five-bedroom home where prosectors say she hosted many of the parties — a potential pot of cash to tap if she is allowed bail.
But Wise said Dec. 17 that nothing has changed since O’Connor’s last hearing to warrant her release.
“It is our position that the only way to keep the victims and the public safe is to keep the defendant in custody with no bail,” Wise said after the hearing. “I do think she’s a danger to the public.”