LeTourneau to Reunite With Student Lover
Sept. 23, 2004 -- Mary Kay LeTourneau, the former schoolteacher recently released after a 7 1/2-year prison term for having sex with one of her grade school students, now plans to marry the student she was jailed for raping.
Watch Barbara Walters' full interview tonight on 20/20 at 10 p.m.
LeTourneau told ABC News' Barbara Walters that she and Vili Fualaau, who was 12 when their encounters began, always planned to marry and their plans haven't changed. LeTourneau has already had two daughters with Fualaau, now 21.
When her relationship with Fualaau began in 1996, LeTourneau was a 34-year-old married mother of four living in suburban Seattle. But her marriage was falling apart and she tells Walters she was feeling emotionally overwhelmed.
LeTourneau said she felt as if even the slightest setback was too much. "I had that feeling if I missed one light everything in my life might just crumble," LeTourneau said.
Teaching was a bright spot in her life. "When I was in the classroom, I absolutely knew that I was in the right place. I don't know how many people can walk into their work every day and say, 'I am in the right place.' And I could say that," she said.
An 'Emotional Attraction'
During this difficult period, Fualaau was a student in LeTourneau's class of sixth-graders. The two developed what she described as an "emotional attraction." She began spending extra time with Fualaau, who she said "had a unique gift in art."
LeTourneau spent more and more time with Fualaau, helping him to develop his gift for drawing. But an incident at the end of the school year, she says, changed everything.
"He just came straight out and said, 'Would you ever have an affair?' " LeTourneau said.
LeTourneau said she tried to resist the boy's flirtations, but admits now that she "felt a very deep love for him."
LeTourneau described an incident that led to the turning point in her relationship with the boy. "He said, 'How old do you think you're going to be when you die?' And I said, 'Oh well, I'll probably be 100, like my grandmother,' and he said, 'Well, then I'm going to be 80 when I die, because I'm not living another day, on this earth, without you.' "
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