Accused, possibly pervy corrupter of teenagers/sexual assault enabler Shannon O'Connor has gotten a new attorney, and she has yet to enter a plea in the Santa Clara County case involving multiple alleged teen victims.
A woman who quickly became notorious, and then persona non grata among families of students at Los Gatos High School over the last year and a half, O'Connor made a brief court appearance Friday. She was expected to enter a plea, however she said nothing in court, as the Mercury News reports, and her new lawyer only spoke briefly to say he would enter a motion for bail at an upcoming hearing in January.
O'Connor's former attorney, Sam Polverino, has recused himself in the last month after seeing a list of potential victims in the case, saying he had a conflict of interest. Per the Mercury News, O'Connor's new lawyer is Brian Madden, who told reporters that he had not had sufficient time to review the case and was not prepared even to comment on it.
The mother of two teen sons, O'Connor has been charged with 39 criminal counts involving 15 alleged teen victims — including felony child endangerment and molestation — stemming from a series of parties and gatherings that took place at her home and at other locations between June 2020 May 2021. As we learned following her extradition from Idaho and arrest in October, O'Connor was reportedly overly involved in the romantic life of her 15-year-old football player son, and she threw multiple boozy parties in an alleged scheme to get him a girlfriend.
The parties, many at a sprawling ranch house that O'Connor and her husband recently sold for $4.6 million, were reportedly messy, sordid affairs in which teens were encouraged to binge-drink, and many would vomit and/or pass out. A teen girl whom O'Connor had been trying to get to date her son told investigators that she had been sexually violated by others boys while extremely intoxicated or unconscious. She also has alleged that O'Connor "laughed" when she told her of an alleged assault at one of these parties.
Multiple teens, according to prosecutors, have alleged that O'Connor both encouraged them to drink and to have sex, and it sounds like she sometimes watched?
Another event described by investigators involved getting a teenage friend of her son extremely drunk, and then allegedly allowing him to hang outside of a vehicle while her son drove around a parking lot, leading to the boy getting a concussion and nearly drowning in a bathtub.
Whether she felt like she was being run out of town, or whether there's other stuff going on in her life, O'Connor decided sometime earlier this year to relocate to Idaho with her two sons. According to one parent of another teen involved in the case, O'Connor relocated there to be closer to a teenage girl whom her son had met playing Fortnite — and O'Connor allegedly got up to her old tricks in Ada County, Idaho, throwing parties for groups of teens at her house.
A Los Gatos parent subsequently took it upon themselves to track down the parents of the new girl in Idaho, to tell them about what had been going on back here in California last year, and that apparently caused some drama there prior to O'Connor's ultimate arrest.
During her court appearance Friday, per the Mercury News, O'Connor "smirked" at a mother and daughter who are connected to the case. Multiple parents of alleged teen victims were in court to hear O'Connor's plea, but that did not arrive. And they plan to return on January 18 to oppose any possible bail.
O'Connor was already denied bail once after her October arrest, and Deputy District Attorney Rebekah Wise argued in a court motion that O'Connor poses a flight risk for multiple reasons, as well a danger to the alleged victims and their families. Investigators say that she has previously harassed some of the teens, and threatened them if they ever told their parents about the parties in the past.
Prosecutors add that O'Connor and her husband — maybe they're still happily married!?! — were in the process of moving to Idaho permanently when she was arrested in early October.
“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 Friday’s hearing. "I do think she’s a danger to the public."
Previously: Los Gatos Parents Reveal How They Took Down 'Cool Mom' Shannon O'Connor