The Tuesday testimony from two alleged assault victims was so damning that the attorney for ‘Cool Mom’ Shannon O’Connor asked for a 16-day delay to rebut the charges.
A Tuesday bail hearing for Los Altos “Cool Mom” Shannon O'Connor, accused of throwing boozy parties for teens that led to sexual assualts and injuries, did answer some pretty major questions about this bizarre case. First, why was she going by two different aliases? We learned today that O'Connor is her maiden name, and she will be charged by that name going forward, to spare her sons the mortified embarrassment they are surely enduring. Second, where was this woman’s husband? We also learned today that the two are now separated, and unsurprisingly, her estranged tech executive husband Robert Amaral now has custody of the son.
But it’s always a brutally bad day in court when a minor takes the stand, in tears, to accuse you of child molestation and sexual battery. And as the Bay Area News Group describes it, “A Los Gatos teen stood trembling at the courtroom microphone, barely maintaining her composure as she tearfully begged a judge not to allow bail for the woman accused of hosting drunken high school parties and sexual hookups for her freshman son’s friends.”
The female teen is identified only as Jane Doe 4. She said the encounters that O'Connor arranged left her with traumatic “memories I’ll have to live with for the rest of my life,” and “robbed me of my innocence.” “I fear she will not face the law,” the girl added. “She hurt so many young people, including her young sons.”
NOTE: We’re going to put a trigger warning on this paragraph. Additional court filings detail that Jane Doe 4 was drunk on a bed, and O'Connor supplied one boy with a condom and sent him in there, and that Jane Doe 4 locked herself in a bathroom to avoid the situation. In another alleged incident involving O’Connor’s hot tub, O’Connor told a boy to fondle Jane Doe 4, and when Jane Doe 4 was in bed incapacitated, O’Connor allowed at least one boy to molest her. O'Connor allegedly laughed at the girl afterward when Jane Doe 4 brought it up.
The court also heard testimony from one of the Idaho victims, Jane Doe 8, who begged the judge to deny bail because “We want to feel free of fear.” The mother of another victim Jane Doe 2, a teen allegedly forced into unwanted sex at a party O’Connor hosted at Lake Tahoe, said that O’Connor “has the means to disappear” and should be denied bail.
O’Connor’s attorney Brian Madden asked for an opportunity to file rebuttals to some of the arguments and documents presented Tuesday. Judge Johnny Gogo (not kidding) granted the extension, so O'Connor will have another bail hearing February 3. She faces 39 charges including felony endangering or injuring children, furnishing liquor to minors, child molestation, and sexual battery.
Related: Los Gatos Parents Reveal How They Took Down 'Cool Mom' Shannon O'Connor [SFist]
Image: Santa Clara County District Attorney