A popular, well-respected and married school teacherwith fourchildren made international headlines when it was discovered she had been sexually abusing one of her pupils.
Despite the crime being discovered and the woman pleading guilty to two counts of second degree child rape, she continued with her relationship with the boy and was pregnant with his child when she served just three months in prison.
On her release she was caught in her car with the child and sent to prison again, this time for seven years. By that time she was pregnant with their second child. In the most bizarre twist,the couple remained together and eventually married.
READ MORE: Horrified woman finds finger in her fast food order and is jailed for nine years
READ MORE: Police burst into man's home and discover nine severed heads in boxes
It was when Vili Fualaau was in second grade, so aged around seven or eight, that Mary Kay Letourneau first met the young boy. She became his teacher when he reached sixth grade at secondary school in Seattle and began giving him special attention, which included encouraging a friendship with her own son who was a year younger.
She would later claim to have fallen head over heels in love with him and in the summer of 1996, when she was 34 and he was 12, she began having sex with him. Her husband Steve found love letters between the pair, according to Crime Monthly magazine and warned the lad off. However a disgusted relative of Steve’s went to the police.
In March 1997 well-liked teacher Mary Kay was arrested and pleaded guilty to child rape - she was already pregnant with their first child, Audrey. The scandal shocked her family and friends, who believed she was a decent and respectable woman. She had married her childhood sweetheart and came from a wealthy, religious family.
Her conservative father was a former college lecturer and Californian state senator. However he had lost his reputation and political career when it was discovered in the early 80s he had two other children by a mistress - a former student of his. He was dying of cancer at the time of Mary Kay’s illegal affair with her own pupil.
She served just three months of a prison sentence in return for plea deals, one of which was that she would never contact Vili again. However, just 30 days after her release, she was caught in a car in the early hours of the morning having sex with him. According to CBS Newsthe vehicle contained a lot of clothes, $6,200 in cash and her passport hidden under the floor mat.
It was discovered that Mary Kay was pregnant again by Vili and she was sentenced to a much harsher term of seven and a half years. The couple’s second daughter, Georgia, was born while she was behind bars, meaning he was a father of two by the age of 15. The pair wrote a book together while she was in prison called Only One Crime: Love and she refused to see any wrong in what she had done, even claiming she didn’t think it was a crime.
In a later interview with NBC Newsshe was asked if she was worried at the time that she would go to jail or get fired from her job for the affair with her pupil. Mary said she was only worried about what his mother would think and replied: "Oh, no. There wasn’t a time that I thought or he thought that, 'Oh, you could go to prison for that'. I thought, 'Gee you know this doesn’t look good.' You know? Just being a teacher."
She went on to say it was her, by then former husband Steve, who had moved away to Alaska with their four children who pointed out she could go to prison. "It was actually my ex-husband had said, 'Ha. My divorce attorney says that you can be charged with a felony.' And I was like, 'felony?'" she said. "I was really thinking there would be a fine, like pay a fine option."
Mary Kay was released in 2004 and registered as a sex offender but Vili went to court and asked for their no contact order to be rescinded because at the age of 21 it was now up to him if he saw her. The couple went on to marry in 2005 with Vili saying the best part of their special day was, "when they announced us husband and wife."
The unlikely couple stayed together and raised their two daughters - who had been temporarily cared for by Vili’s mother while Mary Kay was in jail. She also claimed to have patched up her relationships with her other children from her first marriage.
However after 14 years of apparent wedded bliss, in 2019 Mary and Vili split up. It then emerged they had been having problems for a while and he had turned to alcohol after struggling with his mental health. It seemed that as an adult he had begun questioning their relationship and how it had begun. A friend of his said: "He sees things clearly now and realises that this wasn’t a healthy relationship from the start."
However the pair remained friends and on good terms. The following year, after being sick for six months, Mary died from stage 4 metastatic cancer aged 58. A statement from Vili and her previous family read: "Mary fought tirelessly against this terrible disease. Mary, and all of us, found great strength in having our immediate and extended family members together to join her in this arduous struggle. We did our very best to care for Mary and one another as we kept her close and stayed close together."
Apparently Vili had stayed by her bedside and cared for her right up until the end. A friend of his told People: "He lost a piece of himself. He understands how f***** up everything was in how they got together. He's not stupid. But he can't turn off his feelings completely, and it's a big loss for him. He talked to her right before she passed, and they said everything they needed to say."
Vili has since moved on in another relationship and in 2022 he had another baby, his third daughter, named Sophia. He is also now a grandfather after Georgia, his second child with Mary, welcomed a baby boy with her long-time boyfriend in January 2024. She spoke to People before the baby’s birth about what she thought her mother would make of being a grandmother. "I think maybe at first it would be kind of shocking, because I am her baby, but after that, she’d be the most excited grandmother-to-be," she said.
If you or someone you know need help with the issues raised in this article, free counselling for kids and young people is available from Childline on 0800 1111. Support in recovery from child abuse is available from NAPAC on 0808 801 0331 . You can report child abuse to the NSPCC on 0808 800 5000.
