The jury returned with their verdicts Wednesday in the trial of accused Los Gatos "Party Mom" Shannon O'Connor, and she was found guilty on dozens of counts including child endangerment and sexual offenses.
After about five days of deliberations, following the 16-week trial, a Santa Clara County jury has found 50-year-old Shannon O'Connor guilty of dozens of the counts she was charged with, and not guilty on only a few. Per NBC Bay Area, as of 12:20 pm, there were guilty verdicts in 41 of the counts that had been read so far.
There was some ongoing confusion in media reports Wednesday about the number of guilty verdicts, and the District Attorney referred at a press conference to "more than 60" crimes that O'Connor was convicted of. But ABC 7 finally cleared things up and reported a total of 48 counts for which she was found guilty, including two felony sex charges.
O'Connor was found not guilty of one count of endangering or injuring a child, and two counts of child endangerment, but was found guilty of at least 15 counts of child endangerment, and 6 counts of child endangerment not likely to cause great bodily injury — it's unclear how many of those were felony counts. She was also found guilty of one count of dissuading a witness, two counts of annoying or molesting a child under 18, and two counts of sexual penetration while the victim was intoxicated.
Further, she was found guilty on at least 16 counts of furnishing alcohol to a minor or to a person under 21.
District Attorney Jeff Rosen spoke at a press conference after the verdicts were read.
"Shannon O’Connor was convicted of more than 60 crimes against more than a dozen child victims from Los Gatos," Rosen said, per KRON4. "The charges included child endangerment, molesting a child, dissuading witnesses from testifying, and facilitating forcible sexual assault from one child onto another child. We expect, as parents, that we protect children. This defendant took advantage of children, manipulated children, hurt children … and did that for her own perverse reasons."
O'Connor was charged with a total of 63 counts (20 felony, 43 misdemeanor) — the most serious of which involved non-consensual sexual acts among teens, and annoying and molesting a child — stemming from a series of clandestine parties she either threw or facilitated at her Los Gatos mansion and at least one vacation rental five and six years ago. At these parties, 14- and 15-year-old boys and girls, including her son, reportedly drank copious amounts of beer and other alcohol and engaged in sexual activity, which the prosecution and several witnesses said was sometimes coerced and/encouraged by O'Connor.
The parties, which sometimes occurred late at night, were thrown without the knowledge of O'Connor's husband. And while parents of the other teens testified that they initially trusted O'Connor to look after their children, others grew suspicious and found evidence of her encouraging the kids to lie to their parents in Snapchat threads.
One teen, identified only as John Doe 5, testified that he drank eight beers at one of these parties in September 2020, and this was the first time he had ever consumed alcohol in his life. He also said that he and the other boys treated O'Connor like "a popular girl in the group," and he said, "Looking back on it, it’s pretty weird."
Most of the parties that O'Connor's charges were based on occurred between 2020 and 2021, when most of the teens were freshmen at Los Gatos High School. But some of the teens testified to knowing O'Connor since 2019 or earlier, when some of them were just 11 years old.
Over the 16 weeks of the trial which kicked off in early December, jurors heard testimony from 40 witnesses for the prosecution — including around 20 teenagers who attended parties at O'Connor's home. The owner of a Santa Cruz vacation rental also testified to seeing surveillance camera footage of boys pounding beers and acting like animals while they caused damage to his property.
O'Connor's defense attorney, Stephen Prekoski, primarily argued against the sexual offenses, and argued that the prosecution failed to show evidence that his client got sexual gratification or arousal of her own from coercing the teens, as ABC 7 reports.
Prekoski told reporters that his client was "crushed and very disappointed" by the verdict. She could face 30 years, or more, in prison.
He later said to ABC 7, of the verdict, "Well, it says that I failed. The reason why we effectively conceded the bulk of this case in the opening statement and only fought some counts in a very general sense is because we thought that we would lose credibility with the jurors if we tried to prevent presenting a defense that denied that my client provided alcohol."
Previously: Verdict May Arrive This Week In Much-Delayed Trial of Los Gatos 'Party Mom'
This post has been updated throughout.
