Mary Kay Letourneau is 56 years old. She was 34 years old when she raped 12-year-old Vili Fualaau. The designation of “rape” is not arbitrary – a 12-year-old cannot consent to anything. A 12-year-old is not legally capable of giving his or her consent. I can profess to ignorance of certain laws, but I would argue that nearly every American has some sense of what’s right and what’s wrong, what’s legal and illegal when it comes to sex crimes and children. Sure, few of us could probably know our state’s exact statute of those kinds of sex crimes, but I think 99% can agree that adults having sex with 12-year-old children is always going to be illegal and always should be illegal. So what do you make of Mary Kay’s new idiotic claim that she “didn’t know” that having sex with Vili was a crime?
Mary Kay Letourneau, the elementary school teacher who was convicted in 1996 of raping her sixth-grade student before ultimately marrying him, said in a new interview she didn’t know that her actions were criminal. Appearing on Sunday Night on Australia’s Channel 7, Letourneau said she did not realize her actions were illegal.
“If someone had told me, if anyone had told me, there is a specific law that says this is a crime I did not know,” she told the show. “I’ve said this over and over again. Had I’d known, if anyone knows my personality. Just the idea, this would count as a crime.”
When asked if she was wrongly convicted, Letourneau replied, “absolutely.”
Their relationship started when she was 34 and Vili Fualaau was her 12-year-old sixth-grade student. Following a guilty plea for felony second-degree rape of a child, Letourneau was sentenced to six months behind bars, with three months suspended, and told to have no contact with Fualaau for life. But upon her release, she was re-arrested when she was caught having sex with him, again, in a car. Letourneau was sent back to prison and was released in 2004. Ultimately, she was sentenced to seven-and-a-half years behind bars for child rape in connection with their relationship and remains a registered sex offender in Washington state.
OMFG, you are not “wrongly convicted” if you were ignorant of a certain law. Ignorance of the law is not a legal defense!!! And besides, as I said in the opening, it’s not like this happened when she too was a sheltered idiot who had never heard of anything like “child molestation” or rape. She was 34 years old!! She knew what she was doing was wrong. I can’t believe we’re still having these damn conversations after all these years. And for real, how awful would it be if male predators used this excuse?
Photos courtesy of Discovery ID.
Oh f her! She knew and she certainly knew when she was caught with him again after the judge was lenient the first time.
As a teacher, she was required to report. She’s a moron to think that anyone buys her brand of crap.
What I find interesting is that apparently her father got caught fathering two children out of wedlock with a former student, and she blamed her mother for driving him to it by not giving him enough affection.
So I would say she’s always had a warped view and delusional ideas regarding relationships and sex.
Sex crimes, particularly pedophilia, can be generational. If her parent sexualized the power imbalance between student & teacher, no wonder she normalized this on a deep level. But a sane person might recognize this programming, whilst a narcissist would justify. I’m surprised she’s not in prison, she’s clearly very sick.
I wish people would stop interviewing her and trying to normalize what happened. She’s terrible and should still be in prison in my opinion
Amen.
Agreed. Why interview her? Extremely sick woman.
Yep, came to comment the same thing. We don’t need any “explanation” from this predator.
One of the great regrets of my life was, when I was a very pregnant teacher myself, I went as MKL for Halloween. At the time, I thought it was hilarious and JUST inappropriate enough to be an awesome costume at an adult costume party. I have grown and learned and regret wearing her crimes as a source of hilarity. Her story is important because it proves there is still heinous behavior from even seemingly pretty, “normal” adults- even women. But allowing her to moon over her victim while attempting to exonerate herself is tragically disgusting.
Don’t beat yourself up, Babyjane. It was a sensationalist thing, and a lot of people did similar things when MKL got out of jail and was with her paramour “legally.” I remember some club in Seattle even did a “Hot For Teacher” night, with the two of them hosting.
Why is she suddenly on TV again?? Could it be that #metoo is losing momentum, and it’s a great opportunity for men in power to push false equivalency narratives, such as “women are predators too”? To bury #metoo once and for all? Asking for women.
Really it’s because the Sunday Night program is tabloid trash tv and nobody with integrity would be caught appearing on it as a guest.
Agree 100%
Could we get Mary Kay and Samantha Markle in a new show called HATE HOUSE? I can think of others who could be locked in there too. Programmers take note. WOULD WATCH.
Let’s call her what she is, a sexual predator. Anybody with a brain would never have a sexual relationship with a 12 year old!! My God, it’s stupid to even say that. She took advantage of a child, stealing his childhood and getting pregnant twice. It’s disgusting.
What creeps me out is that they are still together. Does he even have a choice or would she hunt him down otherwise? I remember seeing a copy of a letter or email that she sent him from prison threatening him if he went with another woman while she (MKL) was incarcerated. Or like other child victims, does he even understand that he could leave and have a life post-Mary Kay? I agree that his childhood was stolen by this selfish woman.
I think he has said that he did not have a father, and did not want his daughter to grow up having separated parents. I commend him. It must not have been easy, I think his family / upbringing situation would’ve make easy to make things worse and messier, instead he has tried to make things work with this predator dingbat for the sake of the daughters. I hope they have gotten therapy and have higher self esteem than both their parents.
Barbara: “After her affair with Vili Fallou was discovered…”
Aaand that’s where I cut the video. “Affair.” FFS. Ignorance of the law is not a defense, and even if it were, 34 and 12 is not in the realm of plausible objective or subjective deniability.
Men use the defense “I thought she was older” all of the time, often successfully. She knew.
I’m really curious what she (or he) would say if a 34 year old man was having sex with one of their daughters when they were 12.
I don’t think she would say anything. It’s pretty clear that her brain is BROKE.
Poor Vili was asked that exact question and he NEVER wanted it to happen.
Me too! And it appalls me that as an Elementary teacher she did not know this. If one of her other students had come to her and told her he/she was having sex with a 34 year old would she just shrug it off? Because as a teacher (retired one myself) I was required to report to officials whenever something like that was known. I would not want her teaching my children (which I’m assuming her teaching certificate was revoked).
I’m a teacher and she absolutely did know! My state (Georgia, not wherever she’s from but I’m pretty sure all states have similar mandates) requires me sign off on tons of ethical stuff before I can teach each year. Every single August. She knew and didn’t care.
My stepmom (she lives across the country so I rarely talk to her) is on the whole #metoo is ridiculous and slanderous bandwagon and she posted on social media that men couldn’t be raped, that this kid was willing. I am SHOCKED to hear #*^% like that! And tons of her followers called her out for it thankfully.
Luckily my kids have never (and will never) meet her.
BLOODY HELL, how could any adult who is not low IQ/mentally impaired NOT know that???? HE WAS TWELVE YEARS OLD. She had kids of her own–all she had to do was imagine her 12 year old son or daughter being sexually preyed upon by an adult, and there’s her answer! You don’t need to know the code and number of the law to know when something is WRONG, for f*ck’s sake!
THIS hag.
And to add to this, she was a TEACHER. Teachers are mandated reporters for child abuse and sexual abuse. GUARANTEED she was taught this in school, had trainings on it, etc. Which makes this infinitely more disgusting to me.
She has always maintained some crap that HE was the one pursuing her when he was 12 years old. Why didn’t she just tell him to go home or something like that? She talks as if she was helpless to do anything about it! She was the adult but she didn’t act like it. Even now, she doesn’t act like it.
Classic pedophile/hebephile behaviour – she doesn’t think it’s wrong and her warped sense of sexuality and consent allows her to view him as the initiator. I’ve cross-examined guys who’ve testified 6 year olds came on to them. She hits all the pegs and is very very dangerous. No cure for either disorder once they get out of jail – just counseling and management you can’t counsel someone who refuses to see they have a problem.
Holy s**t, this monster again? Short on money I assume?
FFS I buy someone saying they didn’t know there was no left turns at an intersection,or there are no open fires in a park. But she seriously pleads ignorance that it’s wrong to have sex with a 12 year old?!? Go to hell you piece of garbage.
SHE WAS HIS 2nd GRADE TEACHER. She groomed him, and stalked him. She started abusing him when he was 12 and she found a way to be his teacher again and in a position of power.
This rapist and child molester should still be in prison 100%
Wait – I did not know she was also his teacher in 2nd grade! As sickening as this whole thing is, this adds a whole other layer of child predator to her and the grooming that happened here.
She should 1000000000% be in prison until she dies. And to think she not only got away with what she did, but she even married him and had a family life to normalize her actions.
Ugh this lady. She has always said in interviews Vili “pursued” her and he was the one who initiated it. But as a teacher she should have known to put a stop to it and reported it. And she can’t pretend to have known it was wrong the second time she was caught with him in the car (I love how this detail will follow her for the rest of her life, when I first learned this back in the 2000s I always thought what a tacky way to get caught!).
Life in prison….THAT’S what she should have gotten for her crimes….which she KNEW were crimes…when she committed them….
Yep. She should still be in prison IMO.
Agreed. 100% .
Even if you didn’t know the letter of the law, you have to know that having sex with children is WRONG. Full stop.
This isn’t a 20 year old that thought his 16 year old gf was 18. There is no gray area here. She knew that he was 12. Law or not— just morally wrong. UGH.
And I agree with some other commenters above. STOP interviewing her and allowing her to try to normalize this. Don’t call it an affair…call it sexual assault.
She is sexual predator and a complete stalker nutjob – he never stood a chance and the courts should have been more harsh on her and should have done more to protect him.
She is batch!t crazy and will never ever let him go – didn’t she threaten to kill herself or him if he ever showed interest in someone else?
Apparently they are getting divorced so he has start up a weed farm – good for him, makes it easier to dump her ass and get her chucked back in prison when she goes cray cray.
He’s only dumping her legally because he can’t get the proper cannabis licensing while married to a felon. They are still very much together.
I feel so bad for Vili. No one ever protected him.
She is disgusting and messed up in the head in my opinion. Still trying to justify the fact that she is a pedophile. If she didn’t know it was wrong the first time, she certainly knew later when they were busted by the police hiding in a car and gave a fake name to try and escape.
She stole this man’s childhood and youth for her own twisted selfishness. Her sitting there saying “who was in charge” to him. He was pursuing her apparently. Who cares lady, he was a child and as a responsible adult you should have put a stop to it.
She needs to go away and thank the lucky stars she not still sitting in jail. The amount of hypocrisy in some of her statements makes me rage. And what about her children from her first marriage, does she even care about them at all? What they went through. Ugh
I’m sick of this double standard when it comes to women predators! B@tch, you knew, it was wrong and illegal. Anyone with common sense would call this rape.
This woman also works as a paralegal for the court that let her go apparently. Being white and blonde really gets you through anything.
God, I HATE this woman.
Exactly. Her doe eyed blond princess routine has served her far too well.
Oh my god. Seriously??????????????????? That is awful.
Right!? If she didn’t look the way she does she’d still be in prison or at the very least have a lifetime restraining order against her protecting both Villi, and their two daughters! If she’d been forced to stay away from him he’d have had a chance at a better life away from this predator who stole his childhood.
The victim of a restraining order can ask to have a term put in that allows them to have the order revoked if they give written consent. The order can also allow the victim to withdraw their written consent at a later date. So if Villi was an adult and chose to resume a relationship with Mary Kay, there would have been no way to stop it. The term was meant to give the accused person a chance to change their behaviour and possibly reunite with their family. I wonder if Villi didn’t get sucked back in when MKL got out of prison because he wanted to have their daughters raised with both parents together. Too bad he didn’t just take the girls and get as far away as possible. But MKL probably would have just followed him wherever he went. She doesn’t strike me as the type to let go.
I have always wondered if Vili was her first victim? Would not be shocked if other young men come forward
She’s a liar. As a teacher she was a mandatory reporter, she would have to have been at least a little trained in sexual abuse. I’m not a teacher but work in a school and i take 2 classes a year about abuse and reporting.
Exactly! She’s a f–king liar.
Said the same thing above!
I call BS. Who the hell wouldn’t realize it was illegal to have sex with a child? Gross. I’m 40, and think guys in their 20s are too young for me. Did she have crushes on any other children in her classes?
Because the article was just released in People? If anything, it’s a timely reminder of how America fails SA victims across the board.
Exactly, she should’ve been ordered to stay away from him, for the rest of her life, upon penalty of being sent back to prison.
F this sick narcissist. You clearly didn’t know it was morally repugnant to rape a 12 year old either (because “ your love was special”) either. The media has been playing this up like a harlequin romance for years and it’s time to stop.
I currently have a 12 year old son. Let’s just say, if this were to happen to him, the perpetrator better pray the cops arrest them before I get to them.
Juls. I feel that way too. My daughter is 8.
I worry about this sort of thing a lot. Realistically, if something were to happen, I just don’t have much faith in the law/courts. We have just seen too much about rapists getting away with it. And we have seen too many victims get dragged through hell.
That said, one thing I tell my husband over and over….if something like this really were to happen, you cannot kill them. You will want to. And they will deserve it, but you can’t go to jail because our daughter will need you.
You’re right, Pamela. Being in jail will make life even worse for your child. My husband and I have also discussed this. He firmly stands by his assertion that he would tell the Judge “yes your Honor, I did it. I have no remorse, and I would do it again.”
The thing is, you have to get caught to get prosecuted. Just sayin……..
This woman has been batshit crazy pants for decades. She raped that child, stole his childhood and to this day pretends theirs is a love story. GTFOH with that mess! I feel for Vili because he will never be normal nor escape his abuser.
Agree totally. It’s sickening.
Even in the 90s, you had to do some form of sexual abuse and harassment training to be a teacher (hell, I had to do it to be a camp counselor in my teens).
My youngest is 12. If a thirty-something teacher had ‘sex’ (he hasn’t hit puberty so…wtf?), I would have to be chained and continuously shot with tranquilizers because I’d be a rabid dog. Omg. I swear I’d want to peel her mouth off her face and make her eat it.
Same! My oldest is 11 and while I think he’s so grown compared to his younger sibling, he’s a child. A child full stop no legally maybe nothing. A child! If some grown up tried to sexualize him/molest him, I would lose my shit. What she did is awful, continues to be awful and she should be locked up. Those poor kids. Two parents under one roof isn’t better for the kids when one is a sexual predator I’m sorry.
I was only 8 in 1996 so I don’t remember too many details about this. I didn’t realize she violated a no contact order/that they were caught having sex in a car after she got out of prison. Despicable. I’m disgusted!
She wasn’t ignorant to the law she’s just really being stupid. If one of her 12 y/o daughters were sexually involved a 30+ y/o I bet she’d know right away to call the cops on the pedo. But bc it’s HER and it was a boy she didn’t think it would apply
‘how awful would it be if male predators used this excuse?’
IMO stories like this get talked about more than if the genders were reversed-male teacher, female student-because many incorrectly see it as less of an adult taking advantage of a minor when the minor is a male because males go through sexual maturity faster than females. people respond with much more anger generally than when the student is female. It’s still about control over someone-that’s what pedophilia is about. when she first got arrested she was heavily pregnant with his kid. I can’t believe she was really going to try to pass off her kid with him as her husbands-my God at 12 you look like a baby. I see pictures of myself at 20 and I look like a baby. you cannot tell me that is not sick what she did.
And you can TELL that that man just wants to get AS FAR AWAY FROM HER AS HE CAN!!!! That woman covered that boy/man…WITH SINS that I’m sure haunts him every moment of his life…you can IMAGINE the manipulations she uses on him to make sure he stay RIGHT WHERE HE’S AT…and someone should start a crowd-fund for those young women for therapy care…cause they need it!
Obviously she’s an animal and deserves our scorn but why are you posting this now?
Trying to evoke equal hatred toward women? Is it your sponsor?? Advertiser? Strange timing considering women are ballistic over kavanaugh and co’s attitude toward the same topic…
Presumably, it was reported upon because this female pervert recently gave an interview to Australian television. Your comment edges dangerously close to excusing or making light of her.
I don’t think she is an idiot or stupid because it implies she may be able to learn and / or understand eventually. I think there is something fundamentally WRONG with her. Denial is one thing – not just a river in Egypt! – but this is something else completely. She seems to be a truly sick, disturbed individual. How the state has allowed her to have custody of her children is beyond me. If she had been a man and Villi a 12 year old girl and he’d molested her again AND gotten her pregnant after being released from jail? No…just NO. If she wants to do good works, fine…she can do them from a prison or psychiatric hospital.
I watched a doc on her. She talks like she’s 14, very childish in her voice and manner. She doesn’t think she’s done anything wrong because I think she honestly believes her and Villi are the same age. She’s a predator. I’m really surprised she’s allowed around any children, including her own.
I remember reading someone (it may have been a fellow prisoner) say that she lived in her own reality. She’s a predator for sure, but she’s also a lunatic.
Lots of sex offenders who go after young victims have a childlike attitude and demeanour, it’s been studied.
This woman has been past her 15 minutes of infamy for two decades. She wrecked a lot of lives (keep in mind she had several kids when this mess started). Such a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
No need to announce your effing stupidity to us, Mary Kay, we already knew.
I hate this woman. She wants to be Juliet to his Romeo, and instead she simply ruined his life, her ex-husband and her other children. Sickening.
She’s a liar. Her moral bankruptcy corrodes everything it touches. I feel so sorry for her children, because the love they need she can never provide and that woman has no boundaries.
I am 34 years old now. How a woman my age could view a 12 year old boy in a sexual manner is beyond me. I can barely tolerate being around my 12 year old cousins because of their level of immaturity. She is doing what she has done for years, trying to spin her woe is me narrative. I feel sorry for the child whose life she stole. Last interview I saw with Vili he seemed to regret the situation especially the impact it has on their children.
“I plead guilty but was wrongfully convicted.”
What??!!?
Now that I have a 12 year old, I find this woman more disgusting then ever.
Mary Kay’s father was John Schmidt, a Congressman, John Birch Society member, conservative Catholic, and family values promoter, who had a second family with his secret mistress (also a former student, but at least not in grade school.) Her mom was a campaigner against the Equal Rights Amendment who didn’t divorce him when the mistress-and-two-kids story broke.
Reportedly, Mary Kay adored her dad and was his favorite. So at least there’s a clue how she got to be such a mess.
I’m from Washington and was teaching high school when this case broke. I remember some of my male students saying that bedding the hot teacher was a 12-year-old’s fantasy come true (not that horny 12-year-olds’ fantasies should be abetted). We teachers were mystified by idea of the sexual appeal of 6th-grade boys, let alone the moral vacuum you would have to live in to act on it.
I believe she’s mentally ill & delusional. She had 4 kids with her first husband before she abused Vili. I think Vili’s mother raised the babies while MK was in jail.
Whole family is nuts. One of her brothers works for Trump.
I met her father once, briefly, at that brother’s law school graduation.. Ignoring his politics, he seemed “normal” in the few minutes when we were in a group of new grads..
Read the section on her father’s extramarital affair. Despicable & creepy.
rhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_G._Schmitz
Her father was truly, truly a monster. I feel scarred just reading the account of what happened to the two children he fathered out of wedlock. I would not be surprised if he also abused Mary Kay. But of course that doesn’t excuse her behavior.
I always believed MKL was mentally ill. She needed a mental institution not jail.
Also, after her story, didn’t it seem weekly a “hot” teacher in the US was caught with young boys?? Why has this become so rampant Now? I am 37 and can’t imagine dating a 30 year old much Less 12 or 16!!
Well she DEFINITELY knew it was illegal when she got caught with him when she was on probation and got pregnant a SECOND time.
Uh, no, I was a teen when this happened. It was seen as salacious and gross by society, even then. Trust me, the moral imperative was there, she is full of it.
And she just fed us a load of bs. If it’s true she didn’t know the first time and got convicted fine. However if memory serves, she was released on probation and got hauled back to jail because after she got out she made a beeline toward him. By then she must certainly have known.
She is one sick woman