Letourneau set to leave prison today
SEATTLE – The angelic-looking teacher whose seduction of a sixth-grader launched a thousand tabloid covers is getting out of prison.
Mary Kay Letourneau is scheduled to be released today from the women’s state prison near Gig Harbor after serving a seven-year sentence for child rape.
State Department of Corrections officials were divulging no details about the notorious sex offender’s release. And Letourneau, 42, was keeping mum about whether she plans to reunite with her former pupil, Vili Fualaau, now 21, with whom she has two children.
“I’m not allowing myself to think about being with him,” Letourneau told Seattle’s KOMO-TV. “We had a beautiful relationship, and I value it for what it was.”
Letourneau won’t be able to stay away from Fualaau, predicted Gregg Olsen, who wrote a book about the scandal called, “If Loving You Is Wrong.”
“She has a personal need to get back together with him to prove to the world this is a love story and not a crime story,” Olsen said.
Letourneau was a 34-year-old elementary school teacher in suburban Des Moines and an unhappily married mother of four in 1996, when her friendship with Fualaau, then 12, mutated into flirtation and then sex.
When Letourneau was arrested in 1997, she was pregnant with Fualaau’s daughter. A judge sentenced her to six months in jail for second-degree child rape and ordered her to stay away from Fualaau.
But a month after Letourneau was released, she was caught having sex with Fualaau in her car. She was sent to prison for 7½ years and gave birth to Fualaau’s second daughter behind bars.
“Nothing could have kept the two of them apart,” Seattle attorney Anne Bremner told the Associated Press. Bremner struck up a friendship with Letourneau in 2002, while defending Des Moines police against a civil lawsuit filed by Fualaau and his mother, alleging the police and the school district failed to protect him. A jury rejected their claims.
Letourneau wants to try to build a normal life, Bremner said.
“She wants to be a mother, she wants to be a responsible member of society,” said Bremner.
A skilled writer, Letourneau may want to tell her own story, Olsen said. She has also expressed interest in working for a group that advocates for the rights of mothers in prison.
Attempts by the AP to contact attorneys for Letourneau and Fualaau were unsuccessful.
“I don’t know what my feelings are right now,” Fualauu told KING-TV on Tuesday, acknowledging he was “kind of nervous.”
“But I know that I do love her,” he said.
As a condition of her release, Letourneau can’t contact Fualaau. He could ask a judge to dissolve that no-contact order, but as of Tuesday the King County Superior Court hadn’t received any such request.
Fualaau told People magazine recently that he’d like to reunite with Letourneau, but he wants to take things slowly. His mother is raising their children.
Letourneau’s daughters with Fualaau are now 6 and 7. They visited her in prison about twice a month. Her four older children live in Alaska with her ex-husband, and visited a few times a year.
As a sex offender, Letourneau will have to register with the state and receive court-ordered treatment.