The trial continues this week of onetime Los Gatos resident Shannon O'Connor, who clearly wanted her sons and their friends to think of her a "cool mom" who'd let them drink, but the alleged teen parties she threw actually sound pretty sordid, and unsafe.

If I had to guess, the now 51-year-old Shannon O'Connor will likely end up regretting not taking the plea deal she was offered three years ago which would have seen her likely out of prison in 10 years or less, from now, with time served. Instead, she rolled the dice hoping a jury would find her innocent, or would punish her less, and now that jury has begun being subjected to all the gross details of the teenage booze-and-sex parties she oversaw at her Los Gatos home during the early days of the pandemic.

The parties began in the summer of 2020, not long after O'Connor's older son graduated from middle school and as he entered his freshman year at Los Gatos High School. A friend known in court records as John Doe 5 (the son is being referred to as John Doe 3, and female victims as Jane Does, because all were minors at the time) testified Monday that he first attended one of these parties in September 2020, when he was 13 or 14 years old.

As KRON4 reports, John Doe 5 says he drank eight beers that night, and he says he had never consumed alcohol before then. On the stand, he described attending the party because "all of my friends were doing it," and said that O'Connor's son showed him where the alcohol was hidden, under a tarp in a laundry basket in the garage — hidden, he said, from O'Connor's husband, who was home at the time.

John Doe 5 said that later in the evening, after O'Connor's husband left the house, a case of beer was brought out into the room where kids were partying. "She said, ‘Wait until he leaves, don’t spill anything, don’t do anything stupid,'" he testified, per KRON4, adding, "Everyone was pretty drunk. I couldn’t think too straight. I had trouble walking."

He said he then attended more parties at the O'Conners' house, one for Halloween — at which there were zero adults present and copious amounts of alcohol — and one for the son's 15th birthday that same month at a rented beach house in Santa Cruz.

Deputy District Attorney Joanna Lee asked John Doe 5, per KRON4, "Would people hook up? Were there designated rooms?" And he replied, "Yes," explaining that there were two downstairs bedrooms where sexual activity took place — but he said he didn't feel any pressure to participate.

But, he said, in retrospect the situation was "pretty weird," because O'Connor tended to act, in the words of the prosecutor, like "a popular girl in the group," and even played a role in deciding who was part of the "in" crowd and who wasn't. Some girls, he said, were deemed "untrustworthy" and weren't invited to the gatherings.

John Doe 5 turns out to be the boy who was mentioned in earlier court documents whose parents helped to blow the whistle on O'Connor — after he returned home one night, heavily intoxicated, shirtless and shoeless, and passed out, leaving his parents to then search through his phone and discover Snapchat messages from O'Connor, whose handle was "Nun."

The situation described at these parties seems pretty unhinged, and it is bizarre that O'Connor could think it would stay secret for long. Prosecutors say they have multiple photos of drunk kids at these parties, sometimes passed out or half-dressed — or undressed — and as many as 30 kids at a time would attend these events.

On Tuesday, per KRON4, prosecutors played a recording of a call O'Connor made to the Los Gatos Police Department in October 2020, warning them that they were having an outdoor Halloween party at her house and to tell police that they shouldn't respond to any minor noise complaints. "Because of COVID, it’s going to be an outdoor party only. We won’t answer the door," O'Connor said.

The homeowner of the Santa Cruz rental property that O'Connor rented for her son's birthday also testified about the surveillance footage he watched of drunken teens acting like "hooligans" and leaving his beach house "trashed." O'Connor would later have to pay him $9,000 to cover the damages.

The homeowner said he was shocked watching the footage, which showed boys peeing all over the property, and trying to smash beer cans against their heads. And the sheer amount of booze that was seen arriving at the property via DoorDash delivery was also stunning.

"It just kept coming and coming," he said in court, per KRON4. "It was like 20 beers for each kid … copious amounts of alcohol. I was astounded."

Some of the most damning tesimony against O'Connor is still to come, as the Jane Does in the case are expected to testify about sexual assaults that occurred under her watch — and were even allegedly encouraged by her.

In opening statements, prosecutors said that O'Connor had "an unnatural or abnormal sexual interest" in the teens, and that she'd even watched some of them hooking up — including one incident involving a nearly unconscious girl in a hot tub — for her own "sexual gratification."

Santa Clara County Judge Elizabeth Peterson is presiding over the trial, which is expected to include testimony from 20 witnesses who were teenagers at the time of the alleged crimes, 18 of whom are alleged victims. John Doe 3, O'Connor's eldest son, is expected to take the stand as well.

O'Connor is charged with 63 felonies and misdemeanors, could face more than 30 years in prison if convicted.

Previously: Los Gatos 'Party Mom' Shannon O'Connor Finally on Trial After Multiple Delays, Rejected Plea Deal