Letourneau: 'If I Had Known, I Would Have Run'

ByABC News via logo
February 11, 2007, 2:29 PM

Feb. 22, 2007 — -- Although Mary Kay Letourneau never doubted her romantic feelings toward her 12-year-old student, she now says that if she had known the legal ramifications, she would have acted differently toward Villi Fualaau.

"Had I known that all of, that things were going to lay themselves out like they did legally, I sure would have run really fast away from him," she told "Good Morning America" anchor Chris Cuomo in an exclusive interview.

"No matter what was between us. There's nothing that we could have had that would be strong enough to say, 'Gee, yeah, that's OK for me to be separated from my children."

In 1996, Letourneau, then 34, made national headlines with the news that she was pregnant with the child of her then-12-year-old student, Fualaau.

Letourneau pleaded guilty to child rape and went to prison, giving birth to a daughter while there. She was paroled after six months, but within weeks was back in prison for ignoring a court order to stay away from Fualaau.

Pregnant again, Letourneau gave birth to their second daughter in prison.

She was released in August 2004, and the couple married eight months later.

"I never I never imagined that [my children would] be separated from me," she said. "Had I known that, I would have, he wouldn't have been anywhere near me. I wouldn't care what I was feeling. He knows that, too."

"I would never hope for a situation like ours. It just is what it is," she said. "Nobody should ever hope for a -- it's not an ideal path for a teenager at all."

Letourneau did "not for a moment" second-guess her relationship with Fualaau, despite the fact that he was her student.

"I'm not really one of those persons that says what's supposed to be the norm," she said. "I mean, I can see what's supposed to be the norm and I recognize it, but there's so many things in life that don't really don't fall into that norm."

Letourneau said that very few people expected the couple to end up together for the long haul, much less remain a happily married couple.