Mary Kay Letourneau
Mary Kay Letourneau was an American schoolteacher whose controversial relationship with a former student, Vili Fualaau, garnered national attention in the late 1990s. Born to a large Catholic family, Letourneau faced various personal challenges, including a tumultuous marriage and experiences of childhood trauma. In 1997, she was arrested for statutory rape after it was revealed that she had engaged in a sexual relationship with twelve-year-old Fualaau, resulting in two pregnancies. Her initial sentence included jail time, mandatory treatment, and restrictions on contact with Fualaau. However, Letourneau violated these conditions and was sentenced to a longer prison term.
After serving her time, Letourneau and Fualaau, who was now an adult, legally married in 2005 and remained together until 2019. Letourneau's case sparked widespread media coverage and discussion surrounding female sexuality, power dynamics in teacher-student relationships, and societal perceptions of female offenders. Her story has continued to influence cultural narratives, including fictional adaptations in film. Letourneau passed away from cancer in July 2020, leaving behind a complex legacy that remains a point of discussion in the context of sexual offenses and gender issues.
Mary Kay Letourneau
- Born: January 30, 1962
- Place of Birth: Tustin, California
- Died: July 6, 2020
- Place of Death: Washington
AMERICAN SCHOOLTEACHER AND SEXUAL OFFENDER
MAJOR OFFENSE: Child (statutory) rape
ACTIVE: 1996–1998
SENTENCE: Eighty-nine months in prison; suspended and then reinstated after second violation
Early Life
Mary Kay Letourneau was the fourth of seven children born to devout Roman Catholic parents, John and Mary Schmitz. Her college professor father, reputedly one of the more conservative members of the US House of Representatives, ran for president on the notably right-wing American Independent Party ticket in 1972. Her homemaker mother was an antifeminist activist who campaigned against the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment during the 1970s.
The Schmitzes’ picturesque outward appearances were marred by various scandals. Letourneau’s father engaged in a longtime affair with one of his former students, producing Letourneau’s two half-siblings. Letourneau proclaimed that her mother’s cold demeanor had prompted her father to pursue affection elsewhere. One of Letourneau’s older brothers allegedly began fondling her when she was seven years old, though she later downplayed the significance of the sexual abuse. When she was eleven, her three-year-old brother drowned in the family’s swimming pool while Letourneau was thought to be supervising him. Friends of Letourneau reported that she believed her parents held her responsible for the tragedy.
Despite these ordeals, Letourneau enjoyed an active social life while attending Arizona State University. At a college party, she met the man who would become her first husband: Steve Letourneau. In 1985, the two married and dropped out of college upon discovering that Letourneau was pregnant with their first child. By 1989, the couple had four children. However, the Letourneau marriage was rife with conflict, including incessant financial problems and Steve’s infidelity.
After her husband took a job in Seattle, Letourneau began attending evening classes at Seattle University. Once she received her degree, Letourneau began teaching second grade at Shorewood Elementary School in Burien, Washington, where she met for the first time the student she would later refer to as her “soul mate”: eight-year-old Vili Fualaau.
Criminal Career
In 1995, Letourneau was promoted and assigned to teach fifth and sixth grades. She again had Fualaau as a student, who was now twelve years old. As his status as a favored student within the classroom solidified, Fualaau began spending time at the Letourneau residence. By the close of 1996, other teachers noted that Letourneau was acting more like a girlfriend than a mentor to Fualaau.
In the fall of 1996, Letourneau, then age thirty-four, confided in a friend that she was pregnant with Fualaau’s child. Steve’s suspicions that his wife was intimately involved with Fualaau were confirmed when he discovered a love letter written by Letourneau to Fualaau. Shortly after making this discovery, Steve became physically abusive toward Letourneau. Steve and Letourneau’s own mother encouraged her to terminate the pregnancy.
One of Steve’s cousins notified both Child Protective Services and the school district in which Letourneau taught about the affair. A police officer questioned Fualaau about his relationship with Letourneau, and the seventh-grader confirmed that he and Letourneau were romantically involved and that they had had sex. Many feared that Fualaau had not been Letourneau’s only victim. However, investigators ascertained that she had not inappropriately touched any of her other students nor had she engaged in incest with any of her own children.
Legal Action and Outcome
On February 26, 1997, Letourneau was placed under arrest for “child rape” (the term used in Washington State for statutory rape). Having undergone numerous court-ordered psychiatric evaluations following her arrest, she was eventually diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Psychotherapy and psychotropic medications were prescribed as the appropriate treatments. Four months after her arrest, Letourneau gave birth to Fualaau’s daughter.
By pleading guilty on August 7, 1997, to two counts of second-degree statutory rape, Letourneau received a suspended sentence of eighty-nine months in prison. In lieu of serving the prison term, Letourneau was to serve six months in the county jail, enroll in a three-year sexual deviancy treatment program, take her psychotropic medication as prescribed, relinquish custody of her daughter with Fualaau to his mother, and permanently cease all contact with Fualaau. However, although Letourneau was released from jail in January 1998, her freedom was short-lived. In early February of that same year, authorities found Letourneau and Fualaau in a car together. In addition to seeing Fualaau, which was a violation of her sentence conditions, she had been noncompliant with her sexual deviancy treatment program. As a result of violating these conditions of her release, Letourneau’s original sentence of eighty-nine months in prison was reimposed. While serving her sentence, she gave birth to her second child with Fualaau. Both daughters were placed in the custody of Fualaau’s mother. Despite being court-ordered to sever all contact with Fualaau, Letourneau continued to correspond with him from prison.
On August 4, 2004, forty-two-year-old Letourneau was released on parole. Following her release, Fualaau, by then a legal adult, had the “no contact” order lifted, enabling the two to see each other legally. On May 20, 2005, the couple married in a Seattle suburb. They remained together until 2019. Letourneau died of cancer on July 6, 2020, at the age of fifty-eight.
Impact
Mary Kay Letourneau’s case continued to receive media coverage and served as a reference point for subsequent female sexual offender cases involving schoolteachers. In addition to elucidating the existence of female sexual offenders, the case generated discussion regarding biological sexual differences, sexism, and gender bias as reflected in law. The case fascinated the public as it was unclear whether Letourneau’s affinity for Fualaau was an aberration in the behavior of an otherwise well-adjusted woman or symptomatic of a more deep-seated pathology. Letourneau and Fualaau's story even inspired a film, May December (2023). Even though the movie is a work of fiction, it seemed to draw inspiration from Letourneau, whose narrative contributed significantly to the sensational tabloid culture of the 1990s.
Bibliography
Christiansen, Alyson R., and Bruce A. Thyer. “Female Sexual Offenders: A Review of Empirical Research.” Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment 6, no. 3 (2003): 1-16. Examines scientific research conducted on the characteristics of female sex offenders, the possible types of female sexual offenders, and the recommended psychosocial approaches to treatment.
Denove, Myriam S. “The Myth of Innocence: Sexual Scripts and the Recognition of Child Sexual Abuse by Female Perpetrators.” Journal of Sex Research 40, no. 3 (August, 2003): 303-314. Reviews existing data regarding the prevalence of female sexual offending, placing specific emphasis on the ways in which conventional sexual scripts preclude official recognition of female sexual offending as a problem.
Dress, Christina, Tama-Lisa Johnson, and Mary Kay Letourneau. Mass with Mary: The Prison Years. Victoria, B.C.: Trafford, 2004. Dress, a close friend and former cellmate of Letourneau, chronicles Letourneau’s experiences behind bars.
Lang, Cady. “What to Know About the True Story That Inspired May December.” Time, 17 Nov. 2023, time.com/6332158/may-december-netflix-true-story-mary-kay-letourneau/. Accessed 27 Mar. 2024.
Letourneau, Mary Kay, and Vili Fualaau. Un Seul Crime: L’Amour. Paris: Robert Laffont, 1999. A tell-all book about the affair written by the participants. Written in French (the title means “the only crime, love”), it capitalizes on the sympathetic belief held by many Europeans that Letourneau and Fualaau were victims of puritanical U.S. laws.
Olsen, Greg. If Loving You Is Wrong: The Shocking True Story of Mary Kay Letourneau. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999. Provides a detailed profile of Letourneau, referencing interviews with Letourneau and her friends and neighbors.
Victor, Daniel. "Mary Kay Letourneau, Teacher Who Raped Student and Then Married Him, Dies at 58." The New York Times, 7 July 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/07/07/obituaries/mary-kay-letourneau-dead.html. Accessed 13 Nov. 2020.