Mum 'hosted booze-fuelled teen parties where she encouraged sexual assault'
A woman accused of hosting parties for her teenage son and his friends in Northern California where she encouraged them to drink and sexually assault intoxicated girls was charged Monday with more than five dozen felony and misdemeanour counts.
Shannon Marie O’Connor, 49, was indicted by a grand jury in Santa Clara County on 63 charges including child endangerment for furnishing alcohol to minors and aiding and abetting sexual assault, the Mercury News reported.
Seventeen alleged victims testified at the grand jury hearing, the paper said. It wasn’t immediately clear whether O'Çonnor, who was ordered to remain in jail without bail, had an attorney who could speak to the charges.
Prosecutors contend that O’Connor staged six alcohol-fueled parties in 2020 at her then home in Los Gatos and other places. Prosecutors allege she bought beer, vodka, whiskey and other liquor and encouraged the teens, who were mostly 14 and 15, to drink to the point of unconsciousness.
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Attorney Brian Madden, left, and his client Shannon O'Connor, right, are photographed during a bail hearing in Santa Clara County Superior Court (MediaNews Group via Getty Images)She also told them to keep the gatherings a secret and on several occasions, helped teens sneak out of their homes in the middle of the night to attend them, according to court documents.
At a December 2020 party, O’Connor allegedly handed a condom to a boy and pushed him into a room with an intoxicated girl. Both were minors. The girl was able to get away and locked herself in the bathroom, authorities said in court filings.
During a New Year’s Eve party at her home with about five 14-year-olds, O’Connor allegedly watched and laughed as a drunk teen sexually battered a young girl in bed, authorities alleged.
In another case, she allegedly brought a drunk teen into a bedroom at her home where he sexually assaulted an intoxicated 14-year-old girl. That girl told investigators that at another party she was so drunk she almost drowned in a hot tub, according to the court filings.
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 (MediaNews Group via Getty Images)O’Connor was arrested in 2021 in Ada County, Idaho, where she was living at the time. She has been held in jail ever since, with judges and prosecutors looking to speed up the process and take the case to trial to avoid re-traumatising the witnesses, all of whom were minors at the time.
Deputy District Attorney Rebekah Wise told Mercury News: "The preliminary had been pushed back multiple times, and for the minor victims, their anxiety gets ramped up. We’re retraumatizing them by getting them thinking they’re going to the hearing, and then it gets continued."
"These crimes were committed in 2020, and it took a year to file (charges), and it’s been two years since her arrest, so that’s three years since these crimes,” she added. “For the victims and their healing process, having this hang over their head, we just needed for their sake to get past this preliminary point. Now what we’re looking forward to is the jury trial."
The teens have already had to testify several times, first at the bail hearing, then at a hearing that was triggered by O'Connor's request to learn about the sentence she's facing. "It’s really a tough process for these kids to talk about what happened,” said the mother of one of the teen girls.
“It’s been delayed and delayed and delayed. We just wanted to move it along. This waiting is really painful and difficult, and these kids want to move on. This happened when they were freshmen, and now they’re seniors."
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