Mary Kay Letourneau

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

Background

Mary Kay's father was John G. Schmitz, a U.S. Congressman from Orange County, California and a professor at Santa Ana College. 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 teacher-student 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 she had a sexual relationship with him 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. 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 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 acting on information provided by Villi Fualaau's court-appointed therapist, 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. In the car police had found $6,500 in cash and a passport, indicating that she planned to leave the country. The original sentence of seven and a half years was reimposed.

In March 1998, it was found by prison officials that Letourneau was pregnant with another child by Fualaau. Their second daughter, Georgia Alexis, was born in Tacoma hospital on October 16, 1998. Hours after the birth Mary Kay Letourneau was returned to prison. In November 1999 Mary Letourneau was detained in solitary confinement for six months because she wrote letters to Villi Fualaau. In January 2001 her father died. She asked to attend his funeral, but her request was denied.

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 the book Un seul crime, l'amour (1999, Only one crime, love), Mary Letourneau wrote with Vili Fualaau, she claims that Steve Letourneau impregnated a woman who passed the child off as her husband's.

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.

Public reaction

In the United States this rape 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 on the 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?")

In 2004, Dr. Charol Shakeshaft of Hofstra University presented a report to the U.S. Congress arguing that teacher sex abuse has become a pervasive, destructive force in the U.S. Shakeshaft and Terri Miller, president of "Stop Educator Sexual Abuse, Misconduct, and Exploitation" (SESAME), a national organization, have worked to influence the public regarding possible long-term consequences of adults misusing their power over children.

As with other sex crimes, educator sexual misconduct involves adults using their disproportionate power over children to manipulate them into sexual acts, and sometimes into long-term relationships that abusers characterize as 'romances'. Victims of educator sexual misconduct often don't feel that the abuse has damaged them until many years into adulthood. According to a 2002 report by Kali Munro, M.Ed.:

Many men who were sexually abused by women feel deeply ashamed of themselves, their sexuality, and their gender. Sadly and mistakenly, they believe that there must be something profoundly wrong with them that they were abused in this way. Some men defend against feeling this way by being in a constant state of anger or rage -- one of the few emotions that are socially acceptable for men. Many male survivors cope with the abuse by drinking, using drugs, living recklessly, avoiding intimate relationships, numbing their feelings, dissociating, and becoming depressed, anxious or angry.

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. Access to the ceremony was strictly controlled by the television show Entertainment Tonight, which paid for exclusive access. The former Mary Kay Letourneau now goes by the name "Mary Fualaau."

References

Letourneau, (1999). Un seul crime, l'amour (Only one crime, love). Paris, France: Robert Laffont. ISBN 2221088123.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link)
McElroy, W. (2004). No panic over school child abuse. Commentary: The Independent Institute. (Request reprint).
Olsen, G. (1999). New York, NY: St. Martin: True Crime. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help); Missing or empty |title= (help)
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

Sound tracks

Singer/songwriter Jill Sobule wrote a song about LeTourneau, "Mary Kay", appearing on her album Pink Pearl.

External links