A Santa Clara County criminal grand jury has indicted the so-called Los Gatos “party mom” on more than five dozen felony and misdemeanor charges, clearing the path to trial for Shannon O’Connor, who is alleged to have endangered teens with liquor-fueled gatherings where she goaded them into sex.
The indictment filed on Monday charges O’Connor, 49, with 20 felony counts mostly covering child endangerment and aiding and abetting sexual assault — several more than she faced under the initial filing two years ago. The indictment also includes 43 misdemeanor counts based on accusations she furnished alcohol to minors. It follows multiple delays of a preliminary hearing in O’Connor’s case, in which a judge would have decided whether there was sufficient evidence to go to trial.
With the indictment, the case now bypasses the preliminary examination and moves more rapidly to trial. O’Connor, who has been held in Santa Clara County Jail since October 2021, was scheduled to appear in court Monday for the latest preliminary hearing. That court appearance will now be an arraignment on the indictment charges.
Explaining the decision to pursue indictments from the grand jury, Deputy District Attorney Rebekah Wise said her office wanted to shield victims in the case — all minors at the time the alleged crimes were reported in 2020 — from having to continue to travel to court and prepare for testimony, only to be sent home because of another delay and then go through that cycle all over again.
“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,” Wise told this news organization.
“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.”
O’Connor’s lawyer, Brian Madden, said late Monday “for two years, the prosecution and defense have been discussing matters related to a preliminary hearing in this case. At such a hearing, both parties have an opportunity to present evidence. I have engaged in extensive preparation for such a hearing, and it was to be held next week.”
“Now, without any advance notice, the prosecutor has chosen to obtain an indictment from a grand jury, a proceeding at which the defendant and her attorney, are precluded from appearing or presenting evidence,” Madden said. “It is unfortunate that the grand jurors were deprived of defense evidence and heard only from one side.”
According to the indictment, 17 reported victims — listed as John and Jane Does — testified at the grand jury hearing. The hearing is held in secret and run entirely by the prosecution, without the involvement of the defendant’s counsel or any cross examination of witnesses.
In the past two years, O’Connor’s path to the preliminary examination has been beset by delays for a wide range of reasons, most recently in August when a medical issue — thought to have been spider bites or an MRSA skin infection — prompted a continuance.
Back in April, just as the hearing was supposed to get underway, O’Connor asked the judge to reveal what sentence she’d receive if she pleaded guilty as charged. That led to a hearing in which prosecutors presented evidence from the teen victims and their parents on how O’Connor had harmed them.
The judge in May said O’Connor’s sentence would be 17 years and four months if she pleaded guilty to the initial charges — just shy of the 20-year maximum. O’Connor opted to proceed with the preliminary hearing that was rescheduled to August, then subsequently pushed to next week.
The indictment was a relief to the families of the victims — teens who have had to testify twice in open court, first at O’Connor’s hearing seeking bail, which was denied, and then at the hearing following O’Connor’s request to know what her sentence would be. This news organization is not identifying the victims or their parents because the teens were minors when the alleged crimes were committed, and some are alleged to have suffered sex crimes.
“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.”
The charges against O’Connor in the indictment are also more voluminous than the 39 counts filed in the fall of 2021, which included 12 felony child-endangerment charges and 27 misdemeanors counts including sexual battery, child molestation, child endangerment and furnishing alcohol to minors. O’Connor is accused of hosting the teen parties at her Los Gatos home and at rental properties near Santa Cruz and Lake Tahoe, for the benefit of her son, a high school freshman at the time, and his friends and their girlfriends.
There are 24 new counts, which Wise said resulted from subsequent reviews of the same evidence that underpinned the earlier charges. Many of the additional counts come from new victims identified in the same alleged misconduct.
Wise said the higher number of charges increases the defendant’s potential prison exposure, but by how much was not immediately clear Monday.
Two new charges in the indictment involve previously uncharged allegations that O’Connor aided a minor’s being sexually penetrated while intoxicated, ostensibly by furnishing alcohol at the now-infamous parties. A third new charge accuses O’Connor of dissuading an underage witness from talking to police following an alleged drunken joyriding incident in which authorities say O’Connor let her son drive her car in a school parking lot, when one of the son’s friends who had been hanging off the back of the vehicle fell off and suffered a concussion.
Following the indictment Monday, O’Connor was ordered to stay in jail without bail. But the indictment also gives her and her attorney an opportunity to re-argue for affordable bail or supervised release.
Wise voiced some relief that the case against O’Connor appears to be moving more swiftly.
“We are just moving one step closer to a trial, where we get to ultimately hold her accountable for what she has done to these kids and this community,” Wise said.
The teen girl victim’s mother added that she’s grateful O’Connor is facing more serious charges now.
“She’s going to see more time, which is my end goal,” the girl’s mother said. “She’s a menace to society and is clearly unwell. The more that comes out about her predatory ways, the better.”
Source: www.mercurynews.com