Mary Kay Letourneau

Mary Katherine "Mary Kay" Fualaau ( Schmitz, formerly Letourneau; January 30, 1962July 6, 2020), was an American sex offender and teacher who pleaded guilty in 1997 to two counts of felony second-degree rape of a child.

Letourneau was 34, and the child, Vili Fualaau, was 12 years old when she initiated the sexual abuse.

He was her sixth-grade student at an elementary school in Burien, Washington.

While awaiting sentencing, she gave birth to Fualaau's daughter.

With the state seeking a seven and a half year prison sentence, she reached a plea agreement calling for six months in jail with three months suspended and no contact with Fualaau for life, among other terms.

The case received national attention.

Shortly after Letourneau had completed three months in jail, the police caught her in a car with Fualaau.

A judge revoked her plea agreement and reinstated the prison sentence for the maximum allowed by law of seven and a half years.

Eight months after returning to prison, she gave birth to Fualaau's second child, another daughter.

Mary Katherine Schmitz was born in 1962 in Tustin, California, to Mary E. ( Suehr), a former chemist, and John G. Schmitz (1930–2001), a community college instructor and politician.

She was known as Mary Kay to her family.

Letourneau was the fourth of seven children, raised in a "strict Catholic household."

Her father was a member of the right-wing John Birch Society.

When Mary Kay was two years old, her father began a political career, successfully running as a Republican for a seat in the state legislature.

He held positions as a California state senator and U.S. Congressman, winning a special election for an unexpired term in 1970, and the general election later that year.

After a primary defeat in 1972, he changed parties and ran for president as an American Independent Party candidate in the 1972 U.S. presidential election.

In 1973, Letourneau's three-year-old brother drowned in the family pool at their home in the Spyglass Hill section of Corona del Mar, California, while she was playing with another brother in the shallow end.

Letourneau attended Cornelia Connelly High School, an all-girls' Catholic school in Anaheim, California, where she was a member of the cheerleading squad for Servite High School.

She later attended Arizona State University.

In 1978, her father was re-elected as a Republican to the California State Senate.

He intended to run for the U.S. Senate in 1982, but his political career was permanently damaged that year when it was revealed that he had fathered two children out of wedlock during an extramarital affair with a former student at Santa Ana College, where he had taught political science.

Her father's affair caused Letourneau's parents to separate, but they later reconciled.

While attending Arizona State University, Mary Schmitz met and married fellow student Steve Letourneau, and she conceived the first of four children with him.

She later said that she was not in love with Steve, but she married him after being urged to do so by her parents.

The couple moved to Anchorage, Alaska, where Steve found work as a baggage handler for Alaska Airlines.

After a year in Alaska, Steve was transferred to Seattle, Washington, where Mary subsequently gave birth to their second child.

Vili Fualaau (born June 26, 1983) was Letourneau's student in both her second-grade and sixth-grade classes at Shorewood Elementary.

Fualaau is of Samoan descent.

In 1989 she graduated from Seattle University with her teaching degree.

She began teaching second grade at Shorewood Elementary School in the Seattle suburb of Burien.

The Letourneaus' marriage suffered.

They had financial problems, and both parties engaged in extramarital affairs.

When Letourneau was 34, in the summer of 1996, she began sexual advances on the 12-year-old Fualaau.

On June 18, 1996, police found Letourneau with Fualaau in a car parked at a marina.

She was seen jumping into the front seat while Fualaau pretended to sleep in the back.

She and Fualaau provided false names when asked for identification, and Fualaau lied about his age, saying that he was 18.

Fualaau said that no touching had taken place.

She was imprisoned from 1998 to 2004.

Her attorney and former neighbor, David Gehrke, said that she was "emotionally and physically abused by her husband" during their marriage, and twice "went to the hospital for treatment, and the police were called,” although no charges were filed. In May 1999, they divorced while Mary was imprisoned, and Steve gained custody of their four children. In 2010, the Letourneaus became grandparents when their oldest son had a daughter.

Letourneau and Fualaau were married in May 2005, and the marriage lasted 14 years until their separation in 2019.