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==Statutory rape==
==Statutory rape==


In 1996 while Letourneau was a [[Des Moines, Iowa]] elementary school teacher, her friendship with 12-year-old student, Vil Fualaau "mutated into flirtation and then sex". Letourneau was then arrested on February 26, 1997 for the [[statutory rape]]. <ref name = "Spi-SO"/>
In 1996 while Letourneau was a [[Des Moines, Iowa]] elementary school teacher, her friendship with 12-year-old student, Vil Fualaau "mutated into flirtation and then sex". Letourneau was then arrested on February 26, 1997. <ref name = "Spi-SO"/>


On August 7, 1997, Letourneau received a sentence of 89 months imprisonment, suspended after 6 months, on two counts of second-degree statutory rape, by Judge Linda Lau. The sentence specified [[Incarceration in the United States|county jail]], and upon release, enrollment in a three-year sex offender treatment program and no-contact with Fualaau. After serving 3 months in prison, Letourneau received an early release for good behavior on January 1, 1998.
Letourneau was convicted of two counts of second degree child rape and on August 7, 1997, received a sentence of 89 months imprisonment. The sentence specified [[Incarceration in the United States|county jail]], and upon release, enrollment in a three-year sex offender treatment program and no-contact with Fualaau. After serving 3 months in prison, Letourneau received an early release for good behavior on January 1, 1998.


On February 3, 1998, Letourneau was found "having sex with Fualaau in her car" and was arrested for violating the conditions of her suspended sentence including failure to comply with her sex offender treatment program. <ref name = "Spi-SO"/> At the time of arrest, police found $6200 in cash, baby clothes, and a passport, suggesting that Letourneau might have been planning to leave. {{fact}} The original sentencing judge, Judge Lau, ordered the remaining 83 months of Letourneau's suspended sentence reimposed.
On February 3, 1998, Letourneau was found "having sex with Fualaau in her car" and was arrested for violating the conditions of her suspended sentence including failure to comply with her sex offender treatment program. <ref name = "Spi-SO"/> At the time of arrest, police found $6200 in cash, baby clothes, and a passport, suggesting that Letourneau might have been planning to leave. {{fact}} The original sentencing judge, Judge Lau, ordered the remaining 83 months of Letourneau's suspended sentence reimposed.

Revision as of 15:00, 8 June 2010

Mary Kay Letourneau
Born
Mary Katherine Schmitz

(1962-01-30) January 30, 1962 (age 62)
Orange County, California, U.S.
Other namesMary Kay Fualaau
Spouse(s)Steve Letourneau (1984-1999) (divorced)
Vili Fualaau (2005-present)
ChildrenSix (four by Letourneau; two by Fualaau)
Parent(s)John G. Schmitz and Mary E. Schmitz (née Suehr)
RelativesJohn P. Schmitz and Joseph E. Schmitz (brothers), four other siblings and two half-siblings

Mary Kay Letourneau (born Mary Katherine Schmitz; January 30, 1962), ,[1] is an American former schoolteacher convicted in 1997 of the statutory rape of one of her students, a 13-year old boy, with whom the then-married mother of four had a longtime extramarital affair during the boy's teenage years.[2] She gave birth to two children by the boy, Vili Fualaau.[2] The two married in 2005, after he reached adulthood and she had spent several years in prison and divorced her first husband.[3] Her notoriety has turned her into a touchstone cultural reference and has spawned a number of television specials about her. She is also the daughter of a former prominent conservative political figure, John G. Schmitz, whose political career effectively ended due to his own teacher-student sex scandal.

Early Life

Letourneau was born Mary Katherine Schmitz in Tustin, California to university professor, John G. Schmitz and his wife, Mary Schmitz. She was known as Mary Kay to her family and was affectionately called "Cake" by her father. She was the fourth of seven children, raised in a "strict Catholic household" .[4][5]

When Mary Kay was two years old her father began his political career when he ran for a seat in the state legislature. [6]

During his political career, her father represented Orange County districts as a California state senator and U.S. Congressman as a member of the Republican Party, and he ran for president on the even more conservative American Independent Party ticket in the 1972 U.S. presidential election. The former U.S. Marine also was a longtime leader in the ultra-conservative John Birch Society until he was expelled by them for extremist rhetoric.[7] John Schmitz's political career effectively came to an end in 1982, when he admitted to a longtime extramarital affair in which he fathered two children out-of-wedlock with one of his former students at Santa Ana College, a local community college where he had taught political science. The revelation also ended the work of his wife, who left her position as a conservative commentator on a political round-table television show. Previously, Mary Schmitz had become known as the "West Coast Phyllis Schlafly" for her vigorous opposition to ERA, the Equal Rights Amendment.[4][8][9] Two of Mary Kay's siblings, however, continued in the tradition of their parents' prominent conservatism, as elder brothers John P. Schmitz and Joseph E. Schmitz have both served in high posts in recent Republican presidential administrations.

Her father's affair also caused her parents to separate, but they reconciled. According to some friends of hers at the time, she took her father's side in the affair, telling these friends that her mother was a cold person who "drove him to it" by denying him affection.[10] Other friends from back then say she felt as betrayed as her mother did.[11] Her father never financially supported or helped to raise her half-siblings by his mistress, who became wards of the state and went to an orphanage after their mother died and their subsequent guardian (high-profile Washington D.C. astrologer-psychic and real-estate businesswoman Jeane Dixon, a close friend of Mary Schmitz, who also employed Mrs. Schmitz in D.C. real estate after the affair revelation[12]) also then died after two years of caring for them.

During her high school years, she attended Cornelia Connelly High School, an all-girls Catholic school in Anaheim, California, where she was a member of the cheerleading squad for the nearby all-boys Catholic school, Servite High School, where she met and dated, among others, future NBA referee Ron Garretson.[citation needed] (With single-sex institutions, it is commonplace for so-called "sister schools" to supply cheerleaders for nearby "brother schools.") She was reportedly known as a party-girl who was very interested in boys and would frequent fraternity parties at a nearby university. For college, she decided to move one state over, leaving California to enroll at Arizona State University, long infamously ranked as one of the nation's top party schools,[13][14] where she reportedly continued her partying ways.[15]

Marriage and Family

It was there that she met fellow student Steve Letourneau, with whom she became pregnant. One day in class, she started having a miscarriage. Like her parents, she was strongly opposed to abortion, and her mother urged doctors not to do a dilation and curettage, on the chance that she might be carrying twins, which doctors discovered she was. She remained pregnant with the one embryo which survived the miscarriage. She reportedly had doubts about marrying Letourneau because, among other things, she did not think she loved him, but after consulting with her parents who urged her to marry him, she did so and the couple dropped out of college.[16]

The couple moved to his hometown of Anchorage, Alaska, where he took up work as a baggage handler for Alaska Airlines. The couple reportedly had financial problems making ends meet that caused her occasionally to beg her parents for money.[17] The couple also reportedly had marital problems, with him having extramarital affairs that left her feeling jealous and emotionally neglected.[18] After a year in Alaska, his job was transferred to Seattle, where the couple moved and she took care of what soon became a total of four children by day, while taking classes at Seattle University at night so she could become a teacher. She graduated in 1989, and began teaching second grade at Shorewood Elementary School in the Seattle-suburb of Burien, Washington.

Statutory rape

In 1996 while Letourneau was a Des Moines, Iowa elementary school teacher, her friendship with 12-year-old student, Vil Fualaau "mutated into flirtation and then sex". Letourneau was then arrested on February 26, 1997. [19]

Letourneau was convicted of two counts of second degree child rape and on August 7, 1997, received a sentence of 89 months imprisonment. The sentence specified county jail, and upon release, enrollment in a three-year sex offender treatment program and no-contact with Fualaau. After serving 3 months in prison, Letourneau received an early release for good behavior on January 1, 1998.

On February 3, 1998, Letourneau was found "having sex with Fualaau in her car" and was arrested for violating the conditions of her suspended sentence including failure to comply with her sex offender treatment program. [19] At the time of arrest, police found $6200 in cash, baby clothes, and a passport, suggesting that Letourneau might have been planning to leave. [citation needed] The original sentencing judge, Judge Lau, ordered the remaining 83 months of Letourneau's suspended sentence reimposed.

In March 1998, prison officials discovered that Letourneau was pregnant with Fualaau's second daughter, who was born in Tacoma on October 16, 1998. After the birth Letourneau was returned to prison.

In May 1999, she divorced her husband Steve Letourneau who received custody of their four children and relocated to Alaska.[20] Letourneau spent 18 of the first 24 months of her sentence in solitary confinement for various reasons.[21]

In January, 2001, Letourneau's father died, and she was denied a release from prison to attend his funeral.[22]

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.[23] During the ten week trial, defense attorney Anne Bremner, representing the Des Moines Police Department, and Michael Patterson, representing the Highline School District, convinced the jury, that "nothing could keep them apart" and no damages were awarded.[24]

Letourneau was released on a community placement program on August 4, 2004. The following day she registered with the Kings County Sheriff's Office as a Level 2 sex offender as a result of her conviction of the rape of a child in the second degree.[19]

Relationship with Vil Fualaau

Letourneau first met Vili Fualaau when he was a student in her second grade class at Shorewood Elementary School in Burien, Washington.[25] She later taught a combined fifth and sixth grade class in which Fualaau was a student. Letourneau began a personal relationship with Fualaau during that time. [26]At the age of 13, Fualaau impregnated Letourneau who was 35 years old at the time. [25]

Letourneau was arrested, convicted and imprisoned as a result of her sexual relationship with Fualaau which was deemed child rape by the courts. After Letourneau's final release from prison in 2004, Fualaau, at age 21, filed a motion in court for a reversal of the the no-contact order against Letourneau.[19] A few days later, on August 7, 2004, Superior Court Judge Linda Lau revoked the no-contact order she had placed in 1997.[27]

Letourneau and Fualaau were married on May 20, 2005 in the Seattle suburb of Woodinville in a ceremony at the Columbia Winery.[3] Access to the wedding was strictly controlled by the television show Entertainment Tonight, which reportedly paid for exclusive access,[3] although photographs were released to other media outlets. Mary Kay Letourneau's married name is Mary Kay Fualaau. She has said that she would like to have another child and return to the teaching profession. [28] She indicated that she is permitted by law to teach at private schools and community colleges.[28]

Mary Kay and Vili Fualaau have hosted several "Hot for Teacher Night" promotions at a Seattle nightclub.[29] During these events, Vili performs as "DJ Headline", while Mary Kay hosts.[30]

Cultural References

Letourneau was the subject of the 2007 musical: The Mary Kay Letourneau Story: A Karaoke Musical which was produced and performed at the Gorilla Tango Theatre in Chicago, IL.[31]

See also

Suggested Reading

  • Letourneau, Mary Kay (1999). Un seul crime, l'amour (Only one crime, love). Paris, France: Robert Laffont. ISBN 2-221-08812-3. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  • McElroy, W. (2004). No panic over school child abuse. Commentary: The Independent Institute. (Request reprint).
  • Olsen, Gregg (1999). If Loving You is Wrong. New York, NY: St. Martins: 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.


References

  1. ^ "California Births, 1905 - 1995". Family Tree Legends Records Collection (Online Database). Pearl Street Software. 2005. Retrieved 2009-05-11.
  2. ^ a b Wilson, Kimberly A.C. (March 18, 1999). "Letourneau may be transferred to out-of-state prison". Local. Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Retrieved May 11, 2009.
  3. ^ a b c "Letourneau marries Fualaau amid media circus". Local. Seattle Post-Intelligencer. May 21, 2005. Retrieved May 11, 2009.
  4. ^ a b "Mary Kay Letourneau's father dies". Local. Seattle Post-Intelligencer. January 12, 2001. Retrieved May 12, 2009. Cite error: The named reference "Spi-MK-Dad2" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  5. ^ Noe, Denise. Mary Kay Letourneau: The Romance that was a Crime. From chapter entitled "The Politician's Family." [1] Entire work available at truTV.com website, as part of its "Crime Library."
  6. ^ Noe, Denise. Mary Kay Letourneau: The Romance that was a Crime. From chapter entitled "The Politician's Family." [2] Entire work available at truTV.com website, as part of its "Crime Library."
  7. ^ Warrick, Pamela. "The Fall from Spyglass Hill." Los Angeles Times. 29-04-1998. Retrieved 22-10-2009. Page 3. [3]
  8. ^ Noe, Denise. Mary Kay Letourneau: The Romance that was a Crime. From chapter entitled "The Politician's Family". [4] Entire work available at truTV.com website, as part of its "Crime Library."
  9. ^ Noe, Denise. Mary Kay Letourneau: The Romance that was a Crime. From chapter entitled "Scandal of the Second Family." [5] Entire work available at truTV.com website, as part of its "Crime Library."
  10. ^ Noe, Denise. Mary Kay Letourneau: The Romance that was a Crime. From chapter entitled "Scandal of the Second Family." [6] Entire work available at truTV.com website, as part of its "Crime Library."
  11. ^ Warrick, Pamela. "The Fall from Spyglass Hill." Los Angeles Times. 29-04-1998. Retrieved 22-10-2009. Page 4. [7]
  12. ^ Warrick, Pamela. "The Fall from Spyglass Hill." Los Angeles Times. 29-04-1998. Retrieved 22-10-2009. Page 4. [8]
  13. ^ [9]
  14. ^ [10]
  15. ^ Noe, Denise. Mary Kay Letourneau: The Romance that was a Crime. From chapter entitled "The Politician's Family." [11] Entire work available at truTV.com website, as part of its "Crime Library."
  16. ^ Noe, Denise. Mary Kay Letourneau: The Romance that was a Crime. From chapter entitled "Marrying Mr. Right Now." [12] Entire work available at truTV.com website, as part of its "Crime Library."
  17. ^ Noe, Denise. Mary Kay Letourneau: The Romance that was a Crime. From chapter entitled "Marrying Mr. Right Now." [13] Entire work available at truTV.com website, as part of its "Crime Library."
  18. ^ Noe, Denise. Mary Kay Letourneau: The Romance that was a Crime. From chapter entitled "Marrying Mr. Right Now." [14] Entire work available at truTV.com website, as part of its "Crime Library."
  19. ^ a b c d Skolnik, Sam (August 5, 2004). "Letourneau registers as sex offender". Local. Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Retrieved May 11, 2009. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  20. ^ Hatcher, Candy (April 19, 2000). "Letourneau can profit from story, appeals court rules". Local. Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Retrieved May 12, 2009.
  21. ^ Jerome, Richard (July 26, 2004). "Together Again?". People. 62 (4). Time Inc. Retrieved June 1, 2001.
  22. ^ "Mary K. Letourneau's father dies; she won't get to attend funeral". Local. Seattle Post-Intelligencer. January 11, 2001. Retrieved May 12, 2009.
  23. ^ Johnson, Tracy (March 22, 2002). "Fualaau's suit says he wasn't protected from Letourneau". Local. Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Retrieved May 11, 2009.
  24. ^ Skolnik, Sam (May 21, 2002). "Schools, police absolved in Fualaau case". Local. Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Retrieved May 11, 2009.
  25. ^ a b Gartner, Richard B. (1999). "Encoding Sexual Abuse as Sexual Initiation". Betrayed as Boys: Psychodynamic Treatment of Sexually Abused Men (Google Book Search). New York: Guilford Press. p. 45. ISBN 9781572306448. OCLC 317520944. LCCN 98-0 – 0. Retrieved May 12, 2009. {{cite book}}: External link in |chapterurl= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help)
  26. ^ Morales, Tatiana (August 3, 2004). "What's Next For LeTourneau?". The Early Show. Retrieved June 1, 2009.
  27. ^ "Letourneau now allowed to see former student". Local. Seattle Post-Intelligencer. August 7, 2004. Retrieved May 11, 2009.
  28. ^ a b "Letourneau and Fualaau, one year later". Dateline NBC. June 2, 2006. Retrieved May 11, 2009. Cite error: The named reference "Dateline" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  29. ^ Associated Press (May 21, 2009). "Letourneau, young spouse to host " Hot for Teacher" night". The Seattle Times. Retrieved June 7, 2009.
  30. ^ McNerthney, Casey (May 24, 2009). "Inside the Mary Kay Letourneau "Hot For Teacher" night". The Big Blog. Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Retrieved June 7, 2009.
  31. ^ "The Mary Kay Letourneau Story: A Karaoke Musical". Time Out Chicago. 2007. Retrieved May 11, 2009. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

External links

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