Mary Kay Letourneau

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Mary Kay Letourneau (1962 -).

Mary Kay Fualaau (born January 30, 1962), born Mary Katherine Schmitz, formerly Letourneau, is a former schoolteacher known for having a sexual relationship with an underage pupil. She was convicted of statutory rape and served seven years in prison.

Background

Mary Kay's father was John G. Schmitz, a Congressman from Orange County, California. He was generally considered one of the more conservative members of the House, and ran for the Presidency in 1972 on the ultra-conservative American Independent Party ticket. Her mother Mary was a homemaker and anti-feminist activist. Mary Kay is one of seven children born to John and Mary, and has two half-siblings that were the result of a longtime affair between her father and his mistress. One of her brothers served as White House counsel in the George H. W. Bush administration. Another was appointed Inspector General of the Department of Defense by George W. Bush. Mary Kay Schmitz married Steve Letourneau on June 30, 1984. The couple had two daughters and two sons together.

The student-teacher love affair

Letourneau first met Vili Fualaau (born June 26, 1983) when he was a student in her second grade class at Shorewood Elementary School in Burien, Washington. He was eight years old; she was 28. She was his teacher again in the sixth grade, and the relationship became sexual during the summer of 1996, when he was 13. Her husband discovered her relationship with Fualaau when he read their love letters to each other in February 1997, and revealed it to family members. A cousin reported the relationship to local child protection services.

Legal matters

On February 26, 1997, Letourneau was arrested for statutory rape, called "child rape" in Washington state. Four months later, she gave birth to a daughter fathered by her former student. On August 7, 1997, she pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree statutory rape. She was sentenced to 89 months in prison. The sentence was the subject of much debate: because the involved teenager was male, some considered the offense less criminal than it would have been if the teen were female. The law in the State of Washington, however, does not make that distinction.

The prison term was suspended and she was to serve six months in county jail and enroll in a three-year sexual deviancy treatment program. She was released from jail early (January 1, 1998) for good behavior, and as a condition was forbidden from seeing Fualaau; however, on February 3, 1998, police discovered Letourneau in a car with Fualaau and arrested her for violating the conditions of her suspended sentence. She had also failed to comply with her sexual deviancy treatment program. The original sentence of 89 months was reimposed. In March, 1998, it was revealed that Letourneau was pregnant with another child by Fualaau. Their second daughter was born in October, 1998.

Letourneau and her husband Steve were divorced while she was in prison in May, 1999, and Steve was given custody of their four children. He remarried and moved the family to Alaska.

In 2000, Fualaau's family sued the town where he attended school for emotional suffering, lost wages, and the costs of rearing his two children, claiming the school had failed to protect him from Letourneau. The jury found against them and no damages were awarded.

Life after prison

Letourneau was released on parole on August 4, 2004. Two days later, Fualaau, who was by then 21, applied to the court to lift the no-contact order; the request was granted. Letourneau and Fualaau were married on May 20, 2005 in the Seattle suburb of Woodinville at a winery. Tight security protected the ceremony from the paparazzi and other uninvited media. The couple's two daughters were flower girls, and a teenage daughter from Letourneau's first marriage was the maid of honor. The former Mary Kay Letourneau now goes by the name Mary Fualaau.

Publicity

In the United States this affair generated predominantly negative publicity, with some notable exceptions, e.g. Robert Reich's comment "where were teachers like she [Mary Letourneau] when I went to school?". Reich was at that time the Secretary of Labor in President Clinton's administration. In Europe, particularly in France, Letourneau and Fualaau were viewed mostly as victims of the United States' puritanical laws. Typical comments in the (1999) book Un seul crime, l'amour were such as

Cette malheureuse histoire m'a mit dans un état de colère et de révolte. Pourquoi cette injustice? Pourquoi ne pas laisser ces deux amants qui sont fou l'un de l'autre vivre enfin en paix avec leurs deux enfants?

("This unfortunate story made me angry and disgusted. Why this injustice? Why not leave these two lovers, who are crazy for one another, to live in peace with their two children?")

Biography

• Letourneau, M. K. & Fualaau, V. (1999). Un seul crime, l'amour. (The Only Crime: Love.) Paris, France: Robert Laffont.
• Olsen, G. (1999). If Loving You Is Wrong. New York, NY: St. Martin: True Crime.
• Robinson, J. (2001). The Mary Kay Letourneau Affair. Overland Park, KS: Leathers Publishing.
• Dress, C. (2004). Mass With Mary: The Prison Years. Trafford, BC, Canada: Trafford Publishing.

Filmography

• The Mary Kay Letourneau Story: All-American Girl, a 2000 TV movie starring Penelope Ann Miller in the title role
• Mary Kay Latourneau: Forbidden Desire, a Court TV documentary
• "Mary Kay Letourneau: The E! True Hollywood Story," an E! THS episode
• "Mary Kay Letourneau: Out of Bounds," an A&E Biography episode

See also

• Debra Lafave
• Pamela Rogers Turner
• Karen Ellis

External links

• http://www.crimelibrary.com/criminal_mind/psychology/marykay_letourneau/
• The Ignored Red Flags in the Letourneau Marriage
• Yahoo Group on teacher/student relationships