Boy Wants To Marry Jailed Teacher 14-Year-Old Tells TV Station Couple Planned Pregnancy

A 14-year-old boy showed interviewers his “engagement ring” Thursday and said he and a 35-year-old teacher planned their pregnancy in order to create a bond between them.

The former teacher, Mary Kay LeTourneau, has been jailed to await sentencing after pleading guilty to two counts of second-degree child rape.

The King County prosecutor’s office said Thursday that sentencing may be delayed in order to further evaluate her request for sex offender treatment. The crime carries a penalty of up to seven years and five months in prison.

LeTourneau gave birth to the boy’s baby in May following a sexual relationship that began the previous summer, after she taught the boy in sixth grade at Shorewood Elementary School. She had known the child since he was in second grade.

“We made a plan. The only way to keep us together was to have a baby, so that baby would remind me of her,” the boy told KIRO-TV in Seattle.

The boy, whose name has not been released, told KIRO that he stays up nights “thinking about Mary” and hopes to marry her someday.

He said he had the engagement ring engraved with the words “I’ll be there” and adds that LeTourneau has a similar ring engraved with the words “Oh happy day.”

He told MSNBC News that he does not think of her as a criminal. “What if I said she was my life?” he said.

“My brother tried to hook me up with an attractive girl last week … but I told her there’s someone I’m waiting for,” he told KIRO.

The boy repeated earlier statements that he is not a victim.

“It hurts me, it makes me more angry when people give me their pity because I don’t need it. I’m fine,” he told MSNBC.

In a separate interview from jail, LeTourneau told MSNBC that she considered the boy a gifted child.

“When the sexual relationship started, it seemed natural. What didn’t seem natural was that there was a law forbidding such a natural thing,” she told MSNBC.

LeTourneau said she knows now that it was wrong, but added, “I would not expect people to understand but it did exist and it was real.”

LeTourneau’s four other children have gone to live with her estranged husband in Alaska. The couple has filed for divorce. She resigned her teaching job when she pleaded guilty.