Letourneau Says Boy, 14, Paged Her Former Teacher Who Raped Teen Violates Probation With Visit

The boy Mary Kay LeTourneau admitted raping was having problems. He paged her, her lawyer says, wanting to meet and talk. She went.

Now LeTourneau faces up to 7-1/2 years in prison.

On Tuesday, a month after her release from jail, prosecutors say LeTourneau, 35, was arrested after being found in a parked car in south Seattle at 3 a.m. with the teenager, who is also the father of her 9-month-old daughter.

LeTourneau, a former elementary school teacher first met the boy when he was a pupil at her school. The two began having sex in 1996, when he was 13.

“He was having troubles at school, troubles at home. He needed somebody who he could talk to. He initiated the contact,” David Gehrke, LeTourneau’s attorney told The News Tribune of Tacoma.

Arrested for violating terms of her release, Letourneau faces a Friday court hearing where King County Prosecuting Attorney Norm Maleng plans to ask a judge to impose the 7-1/2-year sentence.

She was being held in King County Jail under a suicide watch, jail officials said today.

LeTourneau pleaded guilty in August to two counts of second-degree child rape. In November, King County Superior Court Judge Linda Lau allowed her to avoid prison and instead enter a three-year sex-offender treatment program after a total of six months in jail. She was freed from the King County Jail on Jan. 2, with time off for good behavior.

Police officers looking for a stolen vehicle found LeTourneau and the boy in her car about a block away from where she lived. The car’s windows were fogged and the parking lights were on, said Carmen Best, a police spokeswoman.

The two were clothed and merely talking, Gehrke said.

“There was probably nothing more than a kiss or two,” Robert Huff, one of the boy’s attorneys, told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

Huff said the boy paged LeTourneau while he was staying at a friend’s house Monday night. She picked him up in the Burien area, south of Seattle, the attorney said.

Huff said it was the first time the two had seen each other since LeTourneau was arrested last February.

LeTourneau will admit breaking the conditions of her suspended sentence, which bar her from contacting the boy or any other juvenile, Gehrke said. She will again ask the court for leniency - electronic home monitoring, a stay in a halfway house, perhaps a short jail term, he said.

Maleng said prosecutors will ask for the full prison term at Friday’s hearing.

“The keys to freedom were in her hands,” he said, adding that LeTourneau had “violated the trust of the court and validated” predictions by prosecution experts that she posed a significant risk to reoffend.

David Gilkey, LeTourneau’s community corrections officer, said he last met with her Jan. 15 and that she was complying with terms set by the judge who gave her a suspended sentence.

“There was nothing that led me to believe that she was in violation of anything,” Gilkey said.

He said she had a “maximum classification,” meaning she warranted the highest level of community supervision.

Gilkey was required to contact her at least twice a month, with one contact in person. He said they met twice in his office.

The boy is now an eighth-grader at a district middle school. He has not been in school since Jan. 28, district spokesman Nick Latham said.

Huff, the boy’s attorney, said his client had gotten into minor trouble at school and was staying at a friend’s house for a few days.

LeTourneau’s estranged husband, Steve, now lives in Alaska. He told KOMO-TV of Seattle that there had been plans to have her reunite with their four children.

After Tuesday’s revelation, he told KOMO, everything is “back to ground zero.”