Los Gatos Woman Accused Of Hosting Teen Parties With Alcohol, Sex

LOS GATOS, CA — A Los Gatos woman was arrested Saturday on suspicion of repeatedly pressuring teenagers to have sex while supplying them with alcohol at parties that she hosted.

Shannon O’Connor, 47, faces 39 charges that include felony child abuse, sexual assault and providing alcohol to minors, the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office announced Tuesday. O’Connor was arrested in Eagle, Idaho, and is being extradited to Santa Clara County, according to prosecutors.

The incidents took place between June 2020 and May 2021, according to a synopsis of findings released by the district attorney’s office.

O’Connor, who has a teenage son, was accused of inviting her son’s minor friends to her home for parties and providing them with alcohol to the point where they would “vomit, be unable to stand and fall unconscious,” according to the document. O’Connor then encouraged the minors to engage in sexual activity with each other while she sometimes watched and facilitated, prosecutors said.

During the parties, O’Connor would attempt to pressure girls into entering rooms where boys were waiting, and if they refused, she would “take them aside for a private conversation” until they entered the rooms, according to the synopsis.

O’Connor also attempted to hide the parties from her husband, Robert Amaral — a Silicon Valley tech executive who is currently the chief revenue officer at SlashNext — ensuring that he was not home when they took place, according to prosecutors.

She often used Snapchat to communicate with minors, and in one instance took a boy’s phone while he was intoxicated and pretended to be him, texting a minor female in an attempt to initiate a sexual encounter, investigators said.

Around December 2020, a teenage girl was digitally penetrated while intoxicated by a teenage boy at the insistence of O’Connor, according to prosecutors. O’Connor brought the boy into a bedroom in her home and left him with the girl for 30 minutes, the girl told investigators. She described being “too intoxicated to react or resist,” and crying and covering her face while being sexually assaulted.

“Why did you leave me in there with him?” the girl said to O’Connor afterwards, according to prosecutors. “Like why did you like do that? Like you knew like what he was going to do to me. Like for 30 minutes that was like too long, like he can’t do that.”

O’Connor “just laughed” in response to the girl, according to investigators. The boy said he was so intoxicated that he doesn’t recall the incident.

O’Connor will be arraigned at a later date, according to prosecutors. She faces incarceration if convicted.