May December true story: Mary Kay Letourneau and Vili Fualaau, explained

In some ways, the nation isn’t able to revisit and reassess the story of Mary Kay Letourneau and her sexual-abuse-victim-turned-husband Vili Fualaau. In 1997, Letourneau, a beloved 35-year-old Seattle-area schoolteacher, shocked the nation when she was revealed to be pregnant by Fualaau, her then-13-year-old scholar with whom she’d been having intercourse for almost a yr. The story fueled tabloid media for months, with Letourneau pleading responsible to 2 counts of secondary rape however insisting on reuniting with Fualaau — and giving beginning to 2 of his youngsters earlier than he turned 15.

Maybe as a result of it was tough to take a look at too intently, nonetheless, the story of Letourneau and Fualaau fell out of the media highlight simply when it turned actually layered: after their 2005 wedding ceremony. Regardless of the circumstances of their relationship and the 22-year age hole between them, the couple stayed married for almost 15 years. They divorced in 2019, with sources claiming the connection had “run its course.” Letourneau died a yr later, of most cancers.

The Letourneau-Fualaau saga now regains the media highlight due to Todd Haynes’s star-studded drama May December, arriving to Netflix on December 1. On this fictionalized model of the story, an actress (Natalie Portman) forged in a movie about analogues Grace and Joe (Julianne Moore and Charles Melton) shadows the couple to witness their superficially comfortable relationship, solely to appreciate issues aren’t as they appear.

What society wasn’t able to confront on the time of the scandal — and what appears shockingly clear to us at present — is that Letourneau meets the definition of a pedophile: somebody whose most popular sexual object is a baby. She spent years grooming her goal, then strengthened her ties to him by the legitimacy afforded her by motherhood and marriage. The best way we discuss predatory conduct has advanced tremendously since then, however the way in which we perceive what occurred to Vili Fualaau hasn’t essentially advanced with it.

Whereas the movie doesn’t purport to inform the true story — Grace and Joe have been pet store coworkers, not trainer and scholar, for one factor — what really occurred between Letourneau and Fualaau is one thing we’ve turned away from for too lengthy.

The unsettling relationship between Mary Kay Letourneau and Vili Fualaau

Letourneau got here from a big household — certainly one of seven youngsters born to white, rich, privileged, extraordinarily conservative dad and mom. Her father, an Orange County politician named John Schmitz, was notorious for his antisemitic, homophobic, and misogynist public remarks; he was banned from the notably extremist John Birch Society for being too extremist.

Letourneau’s father was embroiled in a intercourse scandal with a scholar. Within the late ’70s or early ’80s, Schmitz, who was then in his 50s, was instructing authorities at Santa Ana School when he started sleeping with certainly one of his college students, then in her 40s. The 2 had a multi-year affair that resulted within the beginning of two youngsters. In 1982, the affair got here to gentle after a bizarre incident through which certainly one of Schmitz’s two youngsters by his scholar was taken to the hospital as a result of hair had grow to be tightly wrapped round his penis — so tightly it was nearly severed. The ensuing investigation pressured his mom to admit who the boy’s father was, a revelation that severely broken Schmitz’s political profession.

Letourneau, who by no means professed her father’s politics, grew up fairly and widespread. She married her faculty sweetheart, Steve Letourneau, after she turned pregnant, and the 2 moved to the middle-class Seattle suburb of Normandy Park. As a trainer, Letourneau was described as having “boundless energy,” a truth later attributed partially to her prognosis of bipolar dysfunction. She appeared to steadiness enormous bursts of creativity with excessive recklessness. She gained a popularity as an “exceptionally gifted” trainer and loving mom who was dedicated to her 4 youngsters by husband Steve.

As a result of Fualaau, a Samoan American, was a minor, his id was withheld for a lot of the ’90s, which meant the narrative of their relationship was totally dominated by Letourneau’s model of it — and she or he portrayed them as star-crossed soul mates who simply couldn’t assist themselves. She ascribed not possible traits to Fualaau when she met him in second grade, gushing to the Seattle Times that she in some way acknowledged within the little one a mutual “respect, an perception, a spirit, an understanding between us that grew over time.”

Letourneau described lavishing Fualaau with consideration, giving him particular focus as a trainer, taking him on journeys, and showering him with presents. By the point Fualaau entered her class once more as a sixth grader, “He was my finest buddy. We simply walked collectively in the identical rhythm.” Letourneau gave an analogous narrative to Oprah, insisting that Fualaau had “referred to as” to her and that he was “the love of my life.”

Right now, most individuals would in all probability discover this narrative horrifying, the frank confession of a pedophile who spent years grooming their goal. The presents and a spotlight she heaped on him would likely elevate quite a few crimson flags as indicators of a predator. However in 1997, these actions went largely unremarked upon, whereas Letourneau’s lawyer, David Gehrke, defended her in phrases that learn as jaw-dropping in 2023:

“This was a baby she took an curiosity in, not in contrast to certainly one of us may need taken an curiosity in certainly one of our lecturers,” he mentioned. “She did a horrible factor … however all of us make errors. She’s an excellent one that did a really unhealthy factor.”

The concept that Letourneau did one thing comprehensible and that Fualaau was really a fortunate child was bandied about all through the media of the time. Shops gleefully reported Fualaau’s declare that he “bet a friend $20” that he would have intercourse with Letourneau, allegedly lengthy earlier than they began sleeping collectively. The double commonplace that utilized to Fualaau as a male sufferer is hanging, even within the small particulars. For instance, when Steve Letourneau discovered concerning the abuse by discovering his spouse’s letters to Fualaau (the tipping level that finally led a relative to inform authorities), his intuition was to not confront her about whether or not she had been sexually assaulting a scholar, however to go to Fualaau’s home and confront him, demanding whether or not he was sleeping together with her — as if Fualaau have been merely the opposite man in a bootleg affair.

Equally telling was the repeated insistence of Fualaau’s mom, Soona Vili, that her son was mature past his years — “an outdated soul trapped in a younger physique,” she told the Seattle Occasions. In courtroom in August 1997, simply two months after Letourneau gave beginning to her son’s little one, Vili mentioned in a ready assertion, “I don’t really feel that it is a crime. My son doesn’t really feel victimized.” She urged the courtroom to be lenient in sentencing, and initially the courtroom agreed: Though the usual sentence for 2 counts of second-degree rape was between 5 and 7 years, the choose initially suspended most of Letourneau’s 89-month sentence, as an alternative ordering her to serve just six months and obtain therapy for sexual offenders. Vili took custody of Letourneau’s new child daughter throughout her transient jail stint.

A key situation of Letourneau’s parole, nonetheless, was that she eschew all contact with Fualaau. Letourneau, nonetheless claiming to be “in love” together with her sufferer, violated this time period instantly. A month after her launch — after serving simply three months of her unique six-month order — police discovered Letourneau and Fualaau collectively in Letourneau’s parked automotive. Police discovered over $6,000 in money within the automotive and famous that Letourneau seemed to be planning to flee the nation with him. As a substitute, she was despatched again to jail to serve out the rest of her seven-year sentence — now six weeks pregnant together with her second little one by Fualaau.

Whereas serving out the rest of her jail sentence for this offense, Letourneau appeared on the cover of People in 1998 below the headline, “Their weird story of obsessive love: Pregnant once more after trysting together with her former pupil, Mary Kay Letourneau, 36, is again in jail — and nonetheless defiant.” The accompanying picture confirmed Letourneau holding her first little one in her arms whereas fixing the digicam with a pleading expression. The profile questioned if Letourneau’s psychological points could possibly be blamed on her conservative father. For all it portrayed her as unwieldy and obsessive, it additionally balanced each warning with a quote like a buddy’s insistence that the pair have been “drawn collectively like magnets.”

The buddy’s prediction that the couple would probably marry as quickly as Letourneau was launched proved correct: In 2005, they did simply that, bringing what NBC referred to as her “notorious seduction” to a comparatively comfortable ending.

However was it? And was that basically the tip?

What occurred to Mary Kay Letourneau and Vili Fualaau after they left the highlight

In a 1997 Seattle Times interview, Fualaau, then 14, gave a quote that many individuals level to as a way to justify his company within the relationship:

The boy expressed frustration at being handled like a baby. He mentioned he realized that individuals have been making an attempt to guard him however that, consequently, he had not been given a voice in all that’s occurred.

“I need individuals to cease seeing me as a sufferer,” he mentioned. “My life goes to be tremendous. Mary didn’t hurt me in any means. Who’re they to say I’m too younger to know something once they don’t even know me?”

Fualaau, even whereas below the duvet of anonymity, caught doggedly to Letourneau’s narrative that they have been in love. In 2002, Soona Vili sued the school district over what she was now calling Letourneau’s “abuse” of her son, and reportedly mentioned she regretted permitting Fualaau to “promote his story to the media” — however nonetheless spoke of getting forgiven Letourneau and making an attempt her finest to maneuver ahead. She and Fualaau raised the couple’s two youngsters collectively till Letourneau’s launch from jail and their subsequent marriage.

However even on the time, not everybody had such a constructive outlook. Intercourse offender therapist Florence Wolfe flatly referred to as Letourneau’s conduct “exploitation,” telling the Seattle Times in 1997, “The proclamation of affection — it’s a rationalization. Did she care about his welfare, about what may occur to him by changing into a father at 13? … That’s not love — that’s a giant emotional social gathering.”

“The nice disparity in age, place, and developmental stage between the trainer and scholar make any true type of consensual relationship not possible,” wrote a reader named John Baker in a perceptive and maybe prescient letter to the editor of the Brattleboro Reformer. “Youngsters invariably endure the identical sorts of uncomfortable side effects no matter intercourse. In boys it could possibly grow to be extra damaging because of an typically tougher time in accessing the emotional facilities to resolve points.”

Though the couple have been married for properly over a decade, they first started to separate two years before their precise divorce in 2019, at Fualaau’s behest. Nonetheless, when Letourneu entered her last battle with most cancers simply months later, Fualaau reportedly returned to assist look after her till she died in July 2020. From the surface, even within the latter years of the wedding and past, household and pals gave the impression to be supportive of them. In September, the couple’s youthful daughter described Letourneau to Individuals as “an incredible mom” as she ready for motherhood herself. One other household buddy, chatting with Individuals in 2017, described their relationship as “deep,” cast by the fireplace of a media scandal, including, “I give them a whole lot of credit score. They are going to all the time have a bond.”

However a more in-depth take a look at the scenario raises some questions. A 2006 profile of the household in Individuals after a full yr of marriage discovered 22-year-old Fualaau scuffling with alcoholism, driving below the affect, and melancholy, in addition to with integrating himself right into a household the place he was just one yr older than Letourneau’s oldest son. “I really feel like I don’t actually have a spot besides that I’m their mom’s husband,” he advised the outlet. “I get so annoyed.” On their tenth anniversary, at the same time as he celebrated their marriage, he reportedly told Barbara Walters that he believed “the system had failed him” as a baby.

As heartbreaking as this assertion is on reflection, Fualaau appears to be transferring on along with his life; final yr, at age 39, he welcomed his third little one into the world.

Nonetheless, even after Fualaau and Letourneu separated, he continued to grieve her loss. In a 2020 interview with Dr. Oz, he described her as his “finest buddy,” and mentioned that he felt she was “the one one who really cared” given every thing that had occurred between them.

“Is every thing going to be okay?” Dr. Oz requested.

“I don’t know,” Fualaau replied. “I don’t know.”