The California “Party Mom” accused of hosting mansion parties for high-schoolers, supplying them with alcohol and allegedly watching lewd underage sex acts unfold, appeared in court Monday.
Shannon O’Connor, 50, wore a black suit and thick-rimmed glasses, inside a San Jose courthouse, as she listened to testimony from a teenager who took the stand to detail the out-of-control parties she threw for her son and other freshman boys on the the Los Gatos High School football team, KRON 4 reported.
Court documents say O’Connor started throwing the minors outlandish parties shortly after her son graduated from middle school in June 2020, and would hold the events at her $4 million home in Los Gatos where she supplied the teens with alcohol and a space to perform s3xual acts.
O’Connor would encourage the teens to drink alcohol and have s3x as she watched on for her own sexual gratification, legal documents state, according to The Daily Mail.
The “Party Mom” is accused of inviting a select “popular group” of freshman boys and girls she deemed “pretty” and “trustworthy” enough to keep the exclusive parties under wraps, and would reject those she thought wouldn’t “put out,” The Daily Mail reported.
One of the partygoers, referred to as “John Doe 5,” took the stand on Monday, saying he was 13 or 14 years old — and had never drank before — when he attended his first party at O’Connor’s mansion in September 2020, where he had eight beers, KRON reported.
When he arrived around 6 p.m., another teen showed him a hidden stash of alcohol inside a laundry basket underneath a tarp inside the garage, the party-goes testified according to KRON 4.
O’Connor allegedly told them to wait until her husband left before digging into the stash.
“Wait until he leaves, don’t spill anything, don’t do anything stupid,” John Doe 5 recalled on the stand.
“Everyone was pretty drunk. I couldn’t think too straight. I had trouble walking,” John Doe 5 told the court, according to KRON 4.
The witness went to multiple other parties including O’Connor’s son’s birthday party which took place at a ritzy Santa Cruz vacation home in October 2020, according to The Daily Mail.
John Doe 5 said at another bash inside O’Connor’s home, there were two bedrooms downstairs designated for teenagers to get down and dirty, KRON 4 reported.
O’Connor hosted another party on New Year’s Eve where she allegedly watched a boy s3xually assault a teen girl inside her jacuzzi while she was inebriated. “She could barely hold her head above water,” court documents state, according to KRON 4.
Photos and video showing O’Connor handing out alcohol to her teen guests were shown to the jury.
John Doe 5 said he stopped going to the parties after her massive Halloween party where 30 teens drank, several threw up, and one girl fell unconscious, KRON 4 reported.
The teen was busted by his parents when he returned home that night drunk, shirtless and shoeless.
O’Connor has been described as a “friend” and one of the “popular girls” by other teens who’ve testified this week — someone they confided in about sex and relationships, The Daily Mail reported.
Asked in court if John Doe 5 considered O’Connor a friend, he said “Yeah, looking back on its it’s pretty weird,” KRON 4 reported.
O’Connor was arrested in 2021 and indicted with 61 charges including child molestation, furnishing alcohol to minors and endangering or injuring the health of a child. The night before her arrest, 12 teenagers had slept over.