In an interview with Barbara Walters that aired Friday on “20/20,” and on the eve of their 10th wedding anniversary, former teacher Mary Kay Letourneau, 53 and her student-turned-husband, Vili Fualaau, 31, revealed how their relationship became sexual when he was just 12 years old.
Through that union, the couple now have two teenage daughters, bringing Letourneau’s total number of children to six. She met Fualaau in her second grade class in Seattle. She then taught him again in sixth grade in 1996.
“The incident was a late night that it didn’t stop with a kiss,’’ Letourneau told Walters. “And I thought that it would and it didn’t.’’
Months later, her husband discovered a love letter she had written to Fualaau and he contacted police. She was arrested and gave birth to their first daughter while on bail in May 1997.
Following a highly-publicized trial, she was sentenced to six months in county jail – although three were suspended – and was ordered to have no contact with the boy.
Still, weeks after her release, she was found having sex with him in her car and was pregnant with their second daughter. Letourneau gave birth to the second baby girl, Georgia, while she was in jail after being sentenced to an additional seven-and-a-half years behind bars.
Fualaau told Waters that he slipped into a depression over the years.
“I don’t feel like I had the right support or the right help behind me,’’ he told Walters. “From my family, from anyone in general. I mean, my friends couldn’t help me because they had no idea what, what it was like to be a parent, I mean, because we were all 14, 15.’’
He was not allowed to visit Letourneau while she was in prison but he believes contact with her would’ve helped him.
She was released from jail in August 2004 and Fualaau, who was then 21, asked the court to have the no-contact order overturned, which it was.
The couple got married just 10 months later at a Washington winery. They have been together ever since. The couple’s two daughters, 17-year-old Audrey and 16-year-old Georgia, also joined them for the interview with Walters.
