Revisiting Infamous Mary Kay Letourneau and Vili Fualaau Scandal

Letourneau met Fualaau when she was his second-grade teacher at an elementary school in Burien, Washington. Mary Kay was married to Steve Letourneau — with whom she shared four kids — when she was later caught spending time with Fualaau, then 12, outside of school. She was arrested in March 1997 and pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree child rape. Mary Kay gave birth to her first child with Fualaau, daughter Audrey, later that year.

Mary Kay was sentenced to six months in prison and three years of sex offender treatment in the rape case. She was released after completing half the time and was ordered not to contact Fualaau. However, Mary Kay was found in a car with Fualaau two weeks after completing her jail sentence and her original prison sentence of seven and a half years was reinstated.

While serving out her second stint behind bars, Mary Kay welcomed her second daughter with Fualaau, Georgia, in October 1998.

After the scandal, Fualaau dropped out of high school and his mother received custody of his two children with Mary Kay. Fualaau petitioned for the court to drop the no-contact order against Mary Kay once he was over 18 and they officially pursued a relationship. (Mary Kay, meanwhile, had to register as a level 2 sex offender.)

Fualaau and Mary Kay cowrote the 1998 book Un Seul Crime, L’Amour (Only One Crime, Love), which covered their individual accounts of their relationship.

Related: Hollywood’s Sexual Misconduct Scandals

While Hollywood may appear to be all glitz and glam on the surface, the industry has seen its fair share of scandals through the years. The New York Times and the New Yorker first published investigative pieces that accused disgruntled movie producer Harvey Weinstein of decades of sexual assault and harassment in 2017. Soon after, Weinstein stood trial and was convicted […]

During a joint interview with Barbara Walters in 2015, Mary Kay addressed whether she felt “guilty” or “disgusted” for abusing Fualaau. “I loved him very much, and I kind of thought, ‘Why can’t it ever just be a kiss?’” she said. “The incident was a late night, and it didn’t stop with a kiss. And I thought that it would, and it didn’t.”

Fualaau, for his part, recalled his mental health taking a turn for the worst amid the scandal. “I’m surprised I’m still alive today. I went through a really dark time,” he noted about not having a support system when Mary Kay gave birth to their kids while in prison.

Letourneau’s rape case — and subsequent relationship with Fualaau — was the inspiration behind Todd Haynes‘ critically-acclaimed film May December. The movie stars Natalie Portman as an actress named Elizabeth who travels to meet and study the life of Gracie (Julianne Moore), who she is set to play in a project. Gracie’s notorious romance with Joe (Charles Melton), who is 23 years her junior, is the subject of the fictional film.

“I really found myself honoring the distinction in [screenwriter] Samy [Burch]’s script from some of the famous examples of these tabloid stories like Mary Kay Letourneau. I was really looking more for sort of cinematic correlatives because the nature of the script is that you’re left in a state of uncertainty about what to think about these people,” Haynes told The Hollywood Reporter in May 2023. “The reliability you attribute initially to Elizabeth, the character Natalie Portman plays, begins to become destabilized as the film unfolds. You’re in a constant state of reevaluation.”

He continued: “So, I was more curious about how do we tell this story and let all of those ways of reading the film be made pleasurable and allow the audience to feel like it was going to be a fun film to be navigating.”