Her love story had hit the headlines. Mary Kay Letourneau, a teacher convicted of pedophilia after falling in love with her 12-year-old student, died Monday at 58 of colon cancer. His former lawyer announced it on Tuesday.
Mary Kay, a teacher in a college in Seattle (United States), had been sentenced to several months in prison for the rape of Vili Fualaau, the boy with whom she had fallen madly in love. They had started an affair in November 1997. She was 34, he was 12 and was in 6th grade. Their story was kept secret for a year, until Mary-Kay's husband discovered evidence of his wife's adultery. Classmates confirm to the police: the student and his teacher have an affair.
At her trial for rape against a minor in 1997, the young blonde woman with an angelic face, already a mother of four with her husband Steve, appears pregnant in orange clothes. She will give birth in May to a little girl, before being sentenced to six months in prison, three of which are suspended, the obligation to seek treatment for sexual offenses and the ban on contacting Vili. But impossible to stick to it and barely two weeks after his release, the couple is caught in the middle of a frolic in a car. A new trial results in a new conviction for not respecting the terms of her probation, and Mary Kay is sentenced to 99 months in prison. A second little girl was born in 1998, in detention.
Married in 2005, they divorced in 2019
Hated by other inmates, rebellious, trying to get letters to her lover, Mary Kay spent long months in isolation before entering the ranks and becoming a model inmate.
A telefilm broadcast in 2000 and three books, one of which - co-signed by the two lovers - was published in France, are born from this incredible story. Lost, some say, distraught, defending others, Vili nevertheless lives through the dark years, committing acts of petty crime and falling into alcohol.
After the release of his mistress in August 2004, the young man, now 21 years old, had their ban on seeing himself set aside in court. They married in 2005, selling the exclusivity of the ceremony to an American chain, and settled with their two daughters, Audrey and Georgia, in the suburbs of Seattle.
In recent years, the couple had separated and reconciled several times, before divorcing last August, at the request of the husband. Vili Fualaau returned to care for his former wife when she learned of cancer earlier this year. For the past month, he had watched over her 24 hours a day. He was still there Monday evening when she died. According to David Gehrke, the former lawyer for Mary Kay, "part" of his family was also present.
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On her private Instagram account, Audrey Fualaau used a phrase: "love conquers all". "Love can overcome everything".