California Mom Charged With Throwing Alcohol-Fueled Sex Parties For Minors

A California woman has been charged with throwing wild parties for her son and other minors where she handed teenagers alcohol and condoms. She allegedly encouraged teenagers to have sex, at times non-consensual.

Shannon O’Connor, 47, faces 39 criminal charges, including child abuse, sexual assault, and providing alcohol to minors. Since early 2020, O' Connor threw a series of alcohol-fueled parties at her home where minors aged 13 and 14 engaged in sexual activities, prosecutors said. She was arrested Saturday in Ada County, Idaho, where she now resides.

"When these minors were extremely intoxicated from the alcohol, she encouraged them to engage in sexual activity with each other, facilitated sexual encounters, and watched some of these sexual encounters," according to court documents.

The prosecutors said that the minors would get so intoxicated during the parties that they "would vomit, be unable to stand, and fall unconscious."

According to court documents, O’ Connor asked the teens, who attended her parties and were given alcohol, not to tell anyone as "she could go to jail." O’ Connor kept the parties secret from her husband and other parents. She also allegedly threatened a girl who spoke about the parties to others, including enlisting the help of other minors to pressure her into staying quiet.

"It took a lot of brave children to come forward and to untangle this deeply disturbing case," DA Jeff Rosen said in a statement. "As a parent, I’m shocked. As the DA, I’m determined to hold those adults who endanger children fully accountable to the law and our community."

According to a New York Post report, at one party, O’Connor gave a minor boy a condom. She then pushed him into a room where a 14-year-old girl was lying on the bed. After being assaulted, the girl confronted O’Connor.

"Why did you leave me in there with him?" the girl allegedly said. "Like why did you like do that? Like you knew like what he was going to do me."

At a New Year’s party in her house, O’ Connor and five other minors allegedly watched and laughed as a drunk teen sexually assaulted a girl in bed, the prosecutors said. At one gathering, O'Connor asked a minor not to call for help when one of the teens passed out in his own vomit.

O’Connor allegedly took her son and two other minors to a parking lot and let one of them drive her SUV. A minor fell out of the car and got a concussion, KNTV reported. At another gathering, a girl allegedly kept drowning in the hot tub because she was heavily intoxicated.

O’Connor has also been charged with fraud in an unrelated case.