Mary Kay Letourneau

Mary Katherine Fualaau (previously Letourneau, née Schmitz; January 30, 1962 – July 6, 2020) was an American teacher who pleaded guilty in 1997 to two counts of felony second-degree rape of a child and subsequently married her victim/former student. The case received national attention.

After achieving a teaching degree in 1989, Mary Letourneau started working at an elementary school in Burien, Washington. In September 1991, she first met Vili Fualaau, a second-grade pupil. Letourneau admired Fualaau's artistic abilities and kept in touch while not being his teacher. Letourneau and Fualaau met again in the fall of 1995, in sixth-grade class. In June 1996, Letourneau, aged 34, committed statutory rape against Fualaau, aged 12. Eight months after returning to prison, she gave birth to Fualaau's second child, another daughter.

Letourneau was imprisoned from 1998 to 2004, spending half a year in solitary confinement for her communication attempts with Fualaau. After her release, she and Fualaau successfully petitioned to the court to have their no-contact order lifted. Mary Letourneau and Vili Fualaau were married in May 2005. The marriage lasted 14 years; they legally separated in 2019. Letourneau died in 2020, aged 58, from colon cancer, leaving much of her estate to Fualaau.

Early life

Mary Katherine Schmitz was born in 1962 in Tustin, California, to Mary E. ( Suehr), a former chemist, and John G. Schmitz (1930–2001), a community college instructor and politician. She was known as Mary Kay to her family. Letourneau was the third of seven children and the first daughter, raised in a "strict Catholic household."

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. In 1973, Philip Schmitz, one of Mary 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.

In 1978, her father was re-elected as a Republican to the California State Senate. He intended to run for the U.S. Senate in 1982, but his political career was permanently damaged that year when it was revealed that he had fathered two children out of wedlock during an extramarital affair with a former student at Santa Ana College, where he had taught political science. Her father's affair caused Letourneau's parents to separate, but they later reconciled.

First marriage

While attending Arizona State University (ASU), 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 lost to miscarriage. Mary Kay gave birth to the surviving twin, the first of the couple's four children. 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, where Steve found work as a baggage handler for Alaska Airlines. She began teaching second grade at Shorewood Elementary School in the Seattle suburb of Burien.

The Letourneaus' marriage suffered. They had financial problems, and each party engaged in multiple extramarital affairs. In May 1999, they divorced while Mary was imprisoned, and Steve gained custody of their four children. In 2010, the Letourneaus became grandparents when their eldest son had a daughter.

Crime, arrest, and sentencing

In September 1991, Letourneau first met Vili Fualaau (; born June 26, 1983), a child of Samoan descent, when he was her second-grade student at Shorewood Elementary School. She was reported to be a highly praised teacher by the students' parents. Letourneau described her view of Fualaau at that time as "the kind of feeling you have with a brother or sister". In subsequent years, while not being his teacher, she reportedly continued to cultivate Fualaau's artistic abilities.

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. 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. Letourneau pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree child rape. Her first child with Fualaau, a daughter, was born on May 29, 1997, The state sought to sentence her to seven-and-a-half years in prison. 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. She was not required initially to register as a sex offender. She became the subject of an international tabloid scandal and experienced symptoms of degraded mental health.

On February 3, 1998, four weeks after completing her jail sentence, Letourneau was found by police in a car with Fualaau near her home. Letourneau initially said she was alone in the car. She and Fualaau provided false names when asked for identification. Although it was reported that sexual intercourse had occurred in the car, Fualaau told a detective that he and Letourneau had kissed, frequently, and he also reported that he had touched Letourneau on the thigh but that no sexual intercourse had occurred. There was evidence the two had met, several times, since Letourneau's release from jail on January 2. In interviews and in a book on her involvement with Fualaau, Letourneau said she had sex with him in January. Letourneau served her sentence in the Washington Corrections Center for Women.

While serving her second stint in jail, Letourneau gave birth to her second daughter by Fualaau on October 16, 1998. If Loving You Is Wrong. During her imprisonment, Letourneau was allowed visits from her children. When her father died in 2001 and Letourneau requested a furlough to attend his funeral at Fort Myer, Virginia, her request was rejected. While in prison, Letourneau tutored fellow inmates, created audio books for blind readers, participated in the prison choir, and "rarely missed Mass." In one instance, Letourneau served six months in solitary when letters she tried to send to Fualaau were intercepted.

Fualaau dropped out of high school, and his mother was granted custody of his two children. He struggled with suicidal depression and alcoholism, attempting suicide in March 1999. 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. 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.

Release from prison and marriage to Fualaau

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.

Following Letourneau's release, Fualaau, then aged 21, persuaded the court to reverse the no-contact order against her. Letourneau and Fualaau married on May 20, 2005, in the city of Woodinville, Washington, in a ceremony at the Columbia Winery.

Attorney Anne Bremner, who met and befriended Letourneau in 2002, during Fualaau's civil suit, said that Letourneau considered her relationship with Fualaau to be "eternal and endless." According to Bremner, "nothing could have kept the two of them apart." The television series Barbara Walters Presents American Scandals covered the case in December 2015 with an interview to discuss the couple's relationship and their two daughters.

On May 9, 2017, after almost 12 years of marriage, Fualaau filed for separation from Letourneau, but he later withdrew the filing.

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."

The couple finalized a legal separation in August 2019. Earlier in the marriage, Fualaau said he was not a victim, and he was unashamed of the relationship. 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."

Death

Letourneau died July 6, 2020, at her home in Des Moines, Washington, from colorectal cancer. She was 58. Fualaau and her family were present. A joint statement was made by the Fualaau and Letourneau families to commemorate her death. In her will, Letourneau left much of her estate to Fualaau.

In popular culture

Jill Sobule's joking yet sympathetic song "Mary Kay" was included on her fourth album, Pink Pearl (2000).

In 2000, a TV movie was broadcast on the USA Network about Letourneau's illegal relationship All-American Girl: The Mary Kay Letourneau Story.

The book Notes on a Scandal by Zoe Heller released in 2003 was inspired by the case. It was adapted as a movie of the same name starring Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett, in 2006.

The opening scene of the 2012 film That's My Boy, although set in 1984, is loosely inspired by her story. Fualaau himself expressed the notion that the movie was about him.

The 2023 film May December is loosely inspired by her story.

References

External links

Double Standard: The Bias Against Male Victims of Sexual Abuse
Educator Sexual Misconduct: A Synthesis of Existing Literature
Mary Kay Letourneau: The Romance That Was A Crime