MARY KAY LETOURNEAU
Her sad ending
Her final days were spent with the man she was convicted of raping. As Mary Kay Letourneau, 58, succumbed to the cancer which had eaten away her life over the past six months, it was 37-year-old Vili Fualaau, her former husband, the father of two of her children, and yes, her one-time student, who was by her side when she passed away on July 6. “Vili moved back from California, gave up his life there, and for the last two months of Mary’s life he stood by her 24/7 taking care of her,” her family lawyer David Gehrke told Today. “He knew that this was Mary’s end coming, fast moving, and for her sake and the family’s sake, and for his sake, he came back up and was with her, and it meant the world to her.”
For a time, Letourneau and Fualaau were the most talked about couple in the world. Here’s why: Letourneau, a sixth-grade teacher from Seattle, was arrested in 1997 for raping Fualaau, her 12- or 13-year-old student. At the time, she was a 34-year-old married mother of four.
Fualaau had made a bet with his cousin that he would “get” Mary, as in woo her. In an interview on Channel Seven’s Sunday Night in 2018, he said, “Mary and I became really close, and I kinda forgot about the bet.”
One night, police found Letourneau and Fualaau sitting in his parked van. They claimed nothing untoward was going on. Even his mother believed them. “He said there was nothing between them,” his mother later told the Seattle Times. “And I assumed I could trust her with my son.”
A few months later, Steve Letourneau, Mary’s husband, found love letters she had hidden. A relative informed the police and
she was arrested. Letourneau was six months pregnant with Fualaau’s baby at the time. She claimed she didn’t know what she was doing was a crime. “If someone had told me, if anyone had told me, there is a specific law that says this is a crime,” she said on Sunday Night. “I did not know. I’ve said this over and over again. Had I known, if anyone knows my personality. Just the idea, this would count as a crime.”
In the midst of her trial in 1997, she gave birth to her first child with Fualaau, daughter
Audrey Lokelani. Pleading guilty to child rape, a seemingly remorseful Letourneau told the judge: “Your honour, I did something that I had no right to do, morally or legally. It was wrong. And I am sorry. I give you my word that it will not happen again.” She was sentenced to 7½ years in prison, but this was reduced to three months.
Letourneau then fell pregnant to Fualaau again before he was 15. She gave birth to their second child, Georgia, in 1998, while in prison for a second time after breaking parole by seeing Fualaau. Steve Letourneau divorced her and moved to Alaska with their four kids.
“I’m kind of speechless,” he told People, WHO’s sister magazine. “It’s like taking a picture of our family from the wall and throwing it on the ground.”
Against all odds, Letourneau and Fualaau married in 2005, raising Audrey, 22, and Georgia, 21, but separating in 2017. Letourneau had no regrets about their contentious relationship. “Am I sorry that he’s the father of my children? No, I’m not,” she once revealed in an A&E documentary.
“Mary and I became close” FUALAAU