The Mary Kay Letourneau
Xena Donovan
Shortly after Letourneau had completed three months in jail, the police caught her in a car with Fualaau. A judge revoked her plea agreement and reinstated the prison sentence for the maximum allowed by law of seven and a half years.[4] Eight months after returning to prison, she gave birth to Fualaau's second child, another daughter.[5] She was imprisoned from 1998 to 2004. Letourneau and Fualaau were married in May 2005, and the marriage lasted 14 years until their separation in 2019.[6][7][8]
When Mary Kay was two years old, her father began a political career, successfully running as a Republican for a seat in the state legislature.[12] He held positions as a California state senator and U.S. Congressman, winning a special election for an unexpired term in 1970, and the general election later that year. After a primary defeat in 1972, he changed parties and ran for president as an American Independent Party candidate in the 1972 U.S. presidential election.[13][14] In 1973, Philip Schmitz, one of Mary's Kay's brothers, drowned in the family pool at their home in the Spyglass Hill section of Corona del Mar, California, at the age of three while she was playing with another brother in the shallow end.[13] While no one was held responsible for the toddler's death, Mary Kay later claimed that the incident caused a rift between her and her mother as she said her parents tasked her with minding her brothers and her mother had become "cold" with her afterwards.
Letourneau attended Cornelia Connelly High School, an all-girls' Catholic school in Anaheim, California, where she was a member of the cheerleading squad for Servite High School. She later attended Arizona State University.[15]
While attending Arizona State University, Mary Schmitz met fellow student Steve Letourneau. She later found out she was pregnant by him, which had led to complications one day in class when she had to be rushed to the emergency room. Doctors found that she had been carrying twins, but one embryo was still healthy. Following the miscarriage, Mary Kay gave birth to the first of their four children after the healthy baby came to term.[18] She later said that she was not in love with Steve, but she married him after being urged to do so by her parents. Steve also lacked romantic feelings but was also pressured by his parents and willing to marry. Both Steve and Mary Kay dropped out of ASU. The couple moved to Anchorage, Alaska,[19] where Steve found work as a baggage handler for Alaska Airlines.[19] After a year in Alaska, Steve was transferred to Seattle, Washington, where Mary subsequently gave birth to their second child. Determined to get a career in education, Mary Kay enrolled in Seattle University and was awarded a teaching degree in 1989.[20] She began teaching second grade at Shorewood Elementary School in the Seattle suburb of Burien.[21]
Vili Fualaau (/ˈvɪli fʊˈlaʊ/; born June 26, 1983)[27] was Letourneau's student in both her second-grade and sixth-grade classes at Shorewood Elementary. Fualaau is of Samoan descent.[28] When Letourneau was 34, in the summer of 1996, she often invited Fualaau to her house over the summer break to nurture his artistic abilities. This led to a conflict one day where Steve Letourneau ordered Fualaau out of the house and demanded his wife pay more attention to her natural children or focus on finances; slamming down a stack of unpaid bills and shouting "The school year is over; get working on this!". Mary Kay ran outside the house and tearfully apologized to the 12-year-old Fualaau, which culminated in sexual advances.[2][3][29] On June 18, 1996, police found Letourneau with Fualaau in a car parked at a marina. She was seen jumping into the front seat while Fualaau pretended to sleep in the back. She and Fualaau provided false names when asked for identification, and Fualaau lied about his age, saying that he was 18.[30] Fualaau said that no touching had taken place. Letourneau said she and her husband had gotten into an argument, and Fualaau, who she said was a family friend who had been staying with them that night, witnessed the argument and ran away upset. She said she left to find him. Fualaau failed to furnish a driver's license or any government-issued ID card, but the patrolman deduced he was not an adult as claimed.[30] Letourneau and Fualaau were taken to the police station, where Fualaau's mother was called. Mrs. Fualaau said that Mrs. Letourneau was a well-known teacher of Vili's and had no issue with the two of them being in public. As such, the police dropped the matter. She later said that if the police had alerted her to the fact that Letourneau had lied about Fualaau's age and what had occurred in the car, she would not have allowed her son to go back to Letourneau.[30] Letourneau was arrested on March 4, 1997, after a relative of her husband contacted the police.[31][32]
Letourneau pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree child rape. Her first child with Fualaau, a daughter, was born on May 29, 1997,[33] while she was awaiting sentencing.[33] The state sought to sentence her to six and a half years in prison.[34] Through a plea agreement, her sentence was reduced to six months (three of which were suspended) in the county jail and three years of sex offender treatment.[35] She was not required initially to register as a sex offender.[35] As part of her plea agreement, Letourneau could not contact Fualaau or her five children or have contact with any other minors.[4][35][36] She became the subject of an international tabloid scandal[37][38] and experienced symptoms of degraded mental health according to acquaintances.[39]
In February 1998, the judge revoked Letourneau's prior plea agreement and reinstated the prison sentence of seven and a half years for violating the no-contact order.[4][45][16] In interviews and in a book on her involvement with Fualaau, Letourneau said she had sex with him in January.[5] Police said they had no evidence that sex occurred in the February car incident.[46] Letourneau served her sentence in the Washington Corrections Center for Women.[47][48]
Fualaau dropped out of high school, and his mother was granted custody of his two children.[53] He struggled with suicidal depression and alcoholism, attempting suicide in March 1999.[54][55][56] In 2002, Fualaau's family sued the Highline School District and the city of Des Moines, Washington, for emotional suffering, lost wages, and the costs of rearing his two children, claiming the school and the Des Moines Police Department had failed to protect him from Letourneau.[57] Following a ten-week trial, no damages were awarded. Attorney Anne Bremner represented the Des Moines Police Department, while the Highline School District was represented by Michael Patterson.[58]
Letourneau was released from prison to a community placement program on August 4, 2004, and she registered, the following day, with the King County Sheriff's Office as a lifetime level 2 (medium risk) sex offender.[29]
Following Letourneau's release, Fualaau, then age 21, persuaded the court to reverse the no-contact order against her.[29][59] Letourneau and Fualaau married on May 20, 2005, in the city of Woodinville, Washington, in a ceremony at the Columbia Winery.[7] Exclusive access to the wedding was given to the television show Entertainment Tonight,[7] and photographs were released through other media outlets. Letourneau said she planned to have another child and return to the teaching profession. She indicated that by law, she was permitted to teach at private schools and community colleges.[60]
As of April 2018, Fualaau was working at a home improvement store and as a professional DJ, while Letourneau was working as a legal assistant. An article in People quoted an inside source who said, "They know what everyone thinks about their relationship, and they don't care. They really never have. The wrong stuff that happened was so long ago. They are two grown adults who are living their lives now."[67]
The couple finalized a legal separation in August 2019.[8][68][69] Earlier in the marriage, Fualaau said he was not a victim, and he was unashamed of the relationship.[70] According to People in May 2020, an unnamed source "close to Fualaau" said that he sees things clearly now, and he realizes that this wasn't a healthy relationship, from the start".[71]
Letourneau died July 6, 2020, at her home in Des Moines, Washington, from colon cancer. She was 58. Fualaau and her family were at her side, despite their separation. A joint statement was made by the Fualaau and Letourneau families to commemorate her passing. [72] In her will, Letourneau left much of her estate to Fualaau.[73][74][75][76][77]
GIG HARBOR, Wash. (AP) - Mary Kay Letourneau, the one-time grade school teacher whose seduction of a sixth-grade pupil launched a thousand tabloid covers, has been released from prison, a corrections spokeswoman said early Wednesday.
Letourneau was a 34-year-old elementary school teacher in the Seattle suburb of Des Moines and a married mother of four in 1996 when her friendship with the then-12-year-old Fualaau mutated into flirtation and then sex.
Dan, it may be warped but from what I remember of the story at the time it broke out, the woman and the boy were sincere about the relationship. I still think that more than seven years in jail was a very harsh sentence and more damage was done to the boy by the tumult the story created than by the actual relationship.
French laws were softened after a similar story broke out in the late '60s. The schoolteacher Gabrielle Russier had a love affair with one of her student, a 15-year old boy. When the boy's parents took action and the teacher had to face a jail sentence, she commited suicide. Then President Georges Pompidou - when queried about the case at a press conference shortly after the events - had an emotional reply and quoted a phrase from a poem by Paul Eluard: 'I shall not tell you everything I thought about this case, nor even what action I took. As for what I felt, like a great many people .. Well, "Let those understand who will, my remorse (...) was the reasonable victim with her gaze like a lost child, like those who died because they were loved."
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