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Teacher Mary Letourneau freed


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From AP:

Mary Kay Letourneau, former teacher who served seven years in prison for sex with student, is freed

GIG HARBOR, Wash. (AP) - Mary Kay Letourneau, the one-time grade school teacher whose seduction of a sixth-grade pupil launched a thousand tabloid covers, has been released from prison, a corrections spokeswoman said early Wednesday.

Letourneau served seven and a half years for child rape at the Washington Corrections Center for Women prison near here.

Now 42, Letourneau was keeping mum about whether she plans to reunite with her former student, Vili Fualaau, now 21, with whom she has two children.

Letourneau was a 34-year-old elementary school teacher in the Seattle suburb of Des Moines and a married mother of four in 1996 when her friendship with the then-12-year-old Fualaau mutated into flirtation and then sex.

What she called true love, state law called a crime.

When Letourneau was arrested in 1997, she was already pregnant with Fualaau's daughter. A judge sentenced her to six months for second-degree child rape, and ordered her to stay away from Fualaau.

A month after her release, however, Letourneau 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.

Attempts by the AP to contact attorneys for Letourneau and Fualaau were unsuccessful. Fualaau's number is unlisted.

She was put in jail as a criminal. Hope she gets her chance to live with whoever she chooses to!

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She was put in jail as a criminal. Hope she gets her chance to live with whoever she chooses to!

She was a criminal, Brownie. I don't know about the laws in France, but is it generally considered OK for adult teachers to have sex with 12 year olds?

Now that she's served her time, and he's an adult, yes, by all means, if they want to get together, get married, whatever, more power to them.

But there's something deeply warped about an adult woman falling in "love" with a twelve year old.

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Dan, it may be warped but from what I remember of the story at the time it broke out, the woman and the boy were sincere about the relationship. I still think that more than seven years in jail was a very harsh sentence and more damage was done to the boy by the tumult the story created than by the actual relationship.

French laws were softened after a similar story broke out in the late '60s. The schoolteacher Gabrielle Russier had a love affair with one of her student, a 15-year old boy. When the boy's parents took action and the teacher had to face a jail sentence, she commited suicide. Then President Georges Pompidou - when queried about the case at a press conference shortly after the events - had an emotional reply and quoted a phrase from a poem by Paul Eluard: 'I shall not tell you everything I thought about this case, nor even what action I took. As for what I felt, like a great many people .. Well, "Let those understand who will, my remorse (...) was the reasonable victim with her gaze like a lost child, like those who died because they were loved."

There was a hit film made about the French story.

Luckily, there were no suicide in the Letourneau affair.

Two more aspects to the story, both freshly added by the AP:

As a condition of her release, Letourneau, 42, can't contact former pupil Vili Fualaau, the father of two of her children.

Soriano told NBC that Fualaau plans to ask a judge to dissolve that no-contact order later Wednesday...

...Fualaau told People magazine recently that he'd like to reunite with Letourneau, but wants to take things slowly. He is unemployed and told the magazine he is working on his GED. His mother is raising their children. Fualaau's phone number is unlisted.

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I think there's a huge difference between a love affair with a fifteen year old and a love affair with a twelve year old.

At least when I was growing up (which wasn't that long ago) most 12 year olds weren't even dating, let alone having sex, let alone becoming involved with an adult teacher!

There are 12 year olds who haven't entered puberty yet!

From my perspective, its child abuse, pure and simple. And as far as her sentence goes, remember that it was extended after she had further contact with the boy and managed to get pregnant again.

The French story is unfortunate, but you can't say that its not damaging when a 12 year old finds himself involved with a 30-something woman.

One question: what if the genders were reversed?

The fact is, at least in this country, a 30 year old male teacher gets involved with a 12 year old female student. OOH BOY. He's doing hard time, guaranteed. And it won't matter if he drops the soap in the shower or not, he's gonna be somebody's ho in prison.

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Dan, my guess is that the two of them will be together as soon as they can.

My question thus is: what's the point of having Letourneau holed up for more than seven years in jail?

If she had been sentenced to community work for the period instead of a to a jail term, it would have been to everybody's benefit!

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Dan, my guess is that the two of them will be together as soon as they can.

My question thus is: what's the point of having Letourneau holed up for more than seven years in jail?

If she had been sentenced to community work for the period instead of a to a jail term, it would have been to everybody's benefit!

Because we take child abuse seriously in this country. We also take seriously people who disregard judicial orders.

I'm frankly really surprised at your attitude. I knew that Europeans regard extramarital affairs lightly, but this was a sexual relationship with a twelve year old by a thirty + woman!

It was rape and child abuse, and she deserved jail.

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Brownie, you don't have to convince me that Americans are by and large a bunch of Puritanical hypocrites when it comes to matters regarding sexuality...however, I have to say that I side mostly with Dan on this one, big time.

The thing nobody is talking about here yet is the total, utter abuse of the position of responsibility and power that this woman occupied. Remember she was this poor kid's TEACHER. Right away, the dynamic is simply unethical - this was the teacher of this young child (yes, 12 is still a child to me), and the family and the kid had put their trust in the teacher to act in a professional, ethical manner - to (gasp) teach him, not seduce him. It's not like these two people met out at a social event or something. He was in school, to learn, from her. Serious difference.

Seducing ones student (or for doctors, patients, or for employers, people they supervise), while it happens often, is not very ethical or justifiable in my view because the two people involved are NOT on equal power footing. So there's always the potential for coercion, especially when there's this type of adult/child thing going - it's even less ethical when the kid involved is 12.

If she was really, truly serious about her love and willingness to sacrifice for it, she should have removed herself from this ethical dilemma immediately when she realized she was in love with him - either should have resigned, or gone to someone about transferring him to another classroom.

Was her sentence reasonable? Well, I do believe she did deserve very serious censure, although locking her up was probably not a great option given the drain for no gain on societal resources. Public service would have been reasonable to me, as long as it wasn't at a primary or secondary school! ;)

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Considering that a condition of her release was staying away from him, and she's immediately trying to have that overturned, I wouldn't count on it.

Why am I not surprised that Dan gets this totally ass backward?

August 4, 2004

Teacher Who Had Sex With Child Released

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 9:45 a.m. ET

GIG HARBOR, Wash. (AP) -- Mary Kay Letourneau, the grade school teacher convicted for having sex with a sixth-grade pupil, was released from prison early Wednesday, and her now 21-year-old former lover plans to challenge a court order that bars her from contacting him, a friend said.

``He's relieved that she's out of prison and currently he can't wait to see her,'' Noel Soriano told NBC's ``Today'' show.

Letourneau, who served 7 1/2 years in prison, slipped unnoticed past the hordes of reporters and gawkers outside the Washington Corrections Center for Women before dawn.

As a condition of her release, Letourneau, 42, can't contact former pupil Vili Fualaau, the father of two of her children.

Soriano told NBC that Fualaau plans to ask a judge to dissolve that no-contact order later Wednesday.

Letourneau, who sang in the choir and recorded books-on-tape for the blind while in prison, wants to try to build a normal life, said Seattle attorney Anne Bremner, who struck up a friendship with Letourneau in 2002 and spoke to her recently by phone. ``She wants to be a mother, she wants to be a responsible member of society.''

As a sex offender, Letourneau will have to register with the state and receive court-ordered treatment. Authorities will notify her new neighbors -- although the TV trucks will probably tip them off first. More than seven years in prison has done little to dim Letourneau's notoriety.

A small crowd gathered outside the prison gates on Tuesday night -- a few families and some rowdy teenage boys flaunting signs that said ``I'm 18, Baby'' and ``Take Me Home'' for the TV cameras.

Letourneau was a 34-year-old elementary school teacher in suburban Seattle and a married mother of four in 1996 when her friendship with the then-12-year-old Fualaau mutated into flirtation and then sex.

The illicit relationship was revealed when Letourneau's husband, Steve, found love letters from the boy. Steve Letourneau later moved to Alaska with the couple's children and was granted a divorce.

When Letourneau was arrested in 1997, she was already 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 the temptation proved too much for her to resist. A month after Letourneau was released, she was caught having sex with Fualaau in her car, a violation of her parole. She was sent to prison for seven and a half years, and gave birth to Fualaau's second daughter behind bars.

``This case is not about a flawed system. This is about an opportunity that you foolishly squandered,'' King County Superior Court Judge Linda Lau told Letourneau at her sentencing, referring to the lenient terms she had earlier imposed.

Letourneau's two daughters with Fualaau are now 5 and 7. They visited her in prison about twice a month. Her four older children visited a few times a year.

Letourneau may now want to tell her own story. A state appeals court ruled in 2000 that she may sell and profit from her story. She has also expressed interest in working for a group that advocates for the rights of mothers in prison.

As for trying to reconnect with Fualaau, Letourneau was mum. ``I'm not allowing myself to think about being with him,'' Letourneau told Seattle's KOMO-TV earlier this week. ``We had a beautiful relationship, and I value it for what it was.''

Attempts by The Associated Press to reach Letourneau or her lawyers were unsuccessful.

Fualaau told People magazine recently that he'd like to reunite with Letourneau, but wants to take things slowly. He is unemployed and told the magazine he is working on his GED. His mother is raising their children. Fualaau's phone number is unlisted.

``I don't know what my feelings are right now,'' Fualaau told KING-TV on Tuesday, acknowledging he was ``kind of nervous.''

``But I know that I do love her,'' he said.

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OK, I misread who was challenging what.

But why don't you quote from a larger AP report than what Brownie posted???

I DID quote an entire AP story. :blink:

And of course Dan, you realise that this ruins your credibility in both the Dan's A to Z AND the BABE thread. :lol:

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My question thus is: what's the point of having Letourneau holed up for more than seven years in jail?

If she had been sentenced to community work for the period instead of a to a jail term, it would have been to everybody's benefit!

Was her sentence reasonable? Well, I do believe she did deserve very serious censure, although locking her up was probably not a great option given the drain for no gain on societal resources.

The detail to note is that she was incarcerated TWICE:

The first time, she was released after only 6 months.

A month later, as the AP story states: "she was caught having sex with Fualaau in her car, a violation of her parole. She was sent to prison for seven and a half years, and gave birth to Fualaau's second daughter behind bars."

Edited by maren
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I'm frankly really surprised at your attitude. I knew that Europeans regard extramarital affairs lightly, but this was a sexual relationship with a twelve year old by a thirty + woman!

It was rape and child abuse, and she deserved jail.

Rape means violence. I don't think this is the case here.

We take pedophilia very seriously here. This is not the case here.

And yes in Europe we take some of those things more lightly than the Americans.

When French President Francois Mitterrand died, his widow accepted the presence at her side of his illegitimate daughter at its funeral. It created a shock but it was not cause for scandal. Mitterrand's daughter is now a writer and is one of the regular guest at a TV literary show.

If Clinton had been President of France, he would never have been bothered by an investigation the way the US President had to endure for enjoying a peccadillo with a younger woman. He would have been met by knowing smiles from friends and foes.

One of French director Louis Malle's best film was his 1971 flick 'Le Souffle Au Coeur' which included a very sensitive sequence where the 15-year old hero has a tender sexual relation with his MOTHER! The scene was not filmed in any sentionalised way. 'Le Souffle Au Coeur' - which included a soundtrack that had music from Charlie Parker records - created a scandal at the time. It is played on national TV nowadays!

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Call me puritanical or whatever you want, but I'm sorry, we have really lost our moral compass when we can defend the sexual relationship of a 12 year old boy with his 34 year old teacher, or a 15 year old boy with his mother. LeTourneau is nuts, plain and simple. She wrecked her own marriage, and seems to have messed up her young lover pretty well, and brought two children into the world who will have little chance at a normal family life. I wonder if the word "NO" ever occurred to her. The jail sentence was totally deserved, and I hope she got some serious psychiatric help when she was in prison.

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The NY Post isn't the best place for news, but check this out:

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MARY KAY'S SECRET PRISON NOTES

By GREGG OLSEN

August 1, 2004 -- Seattle teacher temptress Mary Kay Letourneau teased and taunted her schoolboy lover from behind bars, sending letters to him and his family boasting of a steamy sex romp with a prison guard and her flirtations with lesbian inmates.

The revelations of the bombshell letters, obtained by The Post, come only days before the blond-haired felon is due to be released after almost seven years in prison for her forbidden love affair with her 12-year-old student Vili Fualaau.

Some of the more than three dozen letters were smuggled out of the Washington Corrections Center for Women in baby bottles.

The former teacher, 42, also managed to sneak out at least five audio tapes to Fualaau - now 21 and the father of two children with Letourneau - that she recorded in a hushed voice under her bedcovers at night.

The letters and tapes are alternately tender and violent, romantic and hateful.

"I just want to be out and with you - and left alone," she writes. "To go to concerts by the sea again and hold my babies and lay in the sun ... and hear the quiet of the night and ... make love to that one person."

But when she found out that Fualaau was dating other women while she was locked up, she gave him an earful in a letter sent to his older brother, Fuave.

"F--- HIM, if he doesn't have more class than that ... I don't expect him to forget that he has a penis [he needs to remind her it's mine] but there are other ways ... he may as well spit in his babies' faces - and tell them 'Mommy's dead' too ... it's just not right."

As a registered Level 3 sex offender, Letourneau will be subject to routine polygraphs and drug testing when she's released Wednesday.

She's forbidden from making any contact with Fualaau and to date any man with minor children. Violating any of these conditions could send her back to prison.

She plans to settle in an undisclosed Seattle neighborhood and begin piecing her life together again.

Anne Bremner, a Seattle lawyer who spoke with the disgraced teacher in prison last week, told The Post that Letourneau is considering working as an advocate for incarcerated mothers.

She'd like to re-establish closer ties with her six children, including four by her marriage to her former husband, Steve, who's since remarried and divorced - Steven, now 19; Mary Claire, 17; Nick, 12; and Jackie, 10.

"She's been reflecting on her children and how they've suffered throughout this ordeal," the source said. "She wants to make things right."

Letourneau's relationship with Fualaau began in 1996, when she was 34, married with four children - and the sixth-grade teacher of the 12-year-old Fualaau.

After serving six months in jail when the couple's relationship was first discovered, Letourneau was locked up again when the two were found together in a parked car, violating a condition of her probation.

It was this same lifetime no-contact order that Letourneau violated again and again by sending letters to Fualaau.

As punishment, she was sent to segregated lockdown in the "hole" for more time than any other inmate in the institution's recent history.

The only person with the ability to lift that order is Fualaau - and while he told The Post last month that he's been "imagining and thinking about what our life would be like together for a long time," he's never made an effort to approach the court - prompting furious screeds from Letourneau.

"Today I heard you weren't going to court tomorrow," she said in one letter. "Why not? Did you give up? ... F--- you. Some f--king warrior. I'm fighting ... until I f--king die."

When the lashing-out didn't work, Letourneau tried other approaches, promising Fualaau more sex and a new car if he would only tell the judge that he forced himself on her.

Just before the bitter outburst above, she had been playing on Fualaau's emotions with breathy updates on her pregnancy with their second child, Georgia (now known as Alexis), who was born behind bars in October 1998.

"I miss you too much ... Each day my body changes. My breasts are so full and round and feminine. My hair is so long ... I know I look better [than] the prettiest you've ever seen me ... My tummy is growing every day and she [our dear one] is so strong and beautiful looking - PERFECT ... If they take her from me, I will die. She's all I have."

Her daughter, of course, was taken from her when she was born. Alexis, now 5, and sister Audrey, 7, have been raised by Fualaau's mom, Soona.

None of these setbacks got in the way of Letourneau's grand plan, though.

"We will be married," she wrote to him. "We will buy a house with our money ..."

Later, in another letter: "What I see in our married world: A huge movie library ... a special library with all of the greatest pieces of art in writing ... classics [for me to read to you ... and you can stare at my legs and dream, like the first days] ... A garden where wild flowers spring up at surprising times of the year ... maybe we'll want to plant a tree each year on an anniversary ... foreign trees that represent the countries that we visit ... an olive tree after we visit Greece ... palm trees when we visit distant tropical homes ... "

Signing off, she wrote "I LOVE YOU ... Big loves Big kisses Big f--ks Big sounds Big squeeze Big sigh Big missing you ... so so much. Hold on ... take me away."

Yet despite the many letters and recordings, Fualaau never once replied to her.

In one of the audio tapes, she says: "You are the smartest person in the world, and I'm the second smartest."

Letourneau was crafty enough to realize the value of her scandalous story.

"People pay big money for my autograph now," she wrote to Vili's brother, Fauve, "and new pictures are worth thousands. Don't throw away the end of my letter. You might be able to cash in on it somewhere."

Letourneau described Karen Taylor, her lesbian "protector" in prison, in a letter smuggled to Vili as having "[broad] shoulders and the biggest t-tties you've ever seen in your life. They should be in the Guenus [sic] book."

"I'm one of those that needs to be protected from the flaming gays here - there [sic] all over me - testing me ... girls are always fighting over each other. There's bets on who's gonna 'turn me out.'"

Two former inmates who knew Letourneau in prison claim she did end up having two lesbian relationships behind bars.

Aside from the lesbian games, Letourneau boasted of at least one steamy romp with a male correction officer.

"I fell into some crazy spell here, and I let this guy totally come on to me," she wrote to Fuave. "I let him even touch me ... more happened that you don't need to hear about.

"He's 23 years old, funny and smart and wild and strong," she continued. "I loved the way he talked about my body and all of me ... he's a f--king sexaholic and was having a fit we were having so much fun ... He was sitting on my back legs behind my butt once and giving me a back massage - then I felt this kiss on the side of my neck."

Gregg Olsen is the author of "If Loving You is Wrong: The True Story of Mary Kay Letoureau," reissued last month by St. Martins Press.

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I'm with brownie on this one. Putting her in prison wasn't going to change her.

I suspect that this wasn't one of those sentences meant to "punish" her as much as it was meant to send a messege to Society that it isn't the right thing to do...

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