Mary Katherine Fualaau became known in 1997 when she pleaded to two counts of felony second-degree rape of a child. She was an American teacher at that time and the child was Vili Fualaau, who was 12 years old when sexual relations first occurred and had been her sixth-grade student at an elementary school in Burien, Washington.
Mary Kay Letourneau was born on January 30, 1962, in Tustin, California, United States
Was the Letourneau case love or abuse?
According to Mary Kay Letourneau and her student they both claim their relationship was consensual and that they were deeply in love. Mary Kay Letourneau began sexually abusing her 12-year-old student, Vili Fualaau, in 1996 when she was his sixth-grade teacher. The sexual abuse was revealed in February 1997 when her then-husband, Steve Letourneau, found love letters between his wife and Fualaau.
Letourneau was eventually arrested and sentenced to six months in prison, then released on the condition she would not contact Fualaau. She quickly broke the condition of her release, which landed her in prison for seven years and put her on the sex offenders registry for the rest of her life.
According to reports gathered Mary Kay Letourneau had two children for Fualaau before he was 15. When she was released from prison in 2004, the two successfully petitioned to have their court-ordered no-contact order lifted. They married in May 2005, but Fualaau filed for separation from Letourneau in May 2017.
In 2020, Letourneau died from cancer at the age of 58.
