Mary Kay Letourneau

Mary Kay Letourneau (born Mary Katherine Schmitz; 1962–2020) was an American teacher whose sexual abuse of her 12-year-old student, Vili Fualaau, led to a nationally publicized criminal case.

Mary Kay Letourneau (born Mary Katherine Schmitz; 1962–2020) was an American teacher whose sexual abuse of her 12-year-old student, Vili Fualaau, led to a nationally publicized criminal case. She pleaded guilty in 1997 to two counts of second-degree rape of a child and later married Fualaau after serving prison time.

Early life and career

Mary Kay Letourneau was born in 1962 and worked as a teacher in the Seattle area. Public accounts describe her as a married mother of four when the criminal case became public.

Criminal case

In 1997, Letourneau was arrested and later pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree rape of a child involving her student Vili Fualaau. The case became one of the most widely reported teacher-student abuse cases in the United States. It began in Washington state in the mid-1990s and drew extensive national media attention.

Sentencing and imprisonment

The court imposed an 89-month sentence with much of the time suspended, along with treatment and no-contact conditions. She served prison time and was later released after violating parole conditions, according to contemporary reporting.

Later life

After her release, Letourneau and Fualaau married in 2005 and had two daughters. They later separated, and Letourneau died in 2020 of cancer at age 58.