Mary Kay Letourneaou, an American schoolteacher who made headlines for having a secret affair with a 12-year-old student, has insisted she does not know there is a law against having sex with children.
Letourneaou was 34 and married to the father of her first four children when she began a relationship with 12-year-old student Vili Fualaau during summer school.
In 1997, she pleaded guilty to two counts of felony second-degree rape of a child and was sentenced to seven years in prison.
After her release from prison, Letourneau and Fualaau married in 2005 and they share two daughters. Audrey, 21, was born after Letourneau’s initial arrest, while Georgia, 19, was born behind bars.
Speaking on Channel Seven’s Sunday Night, Letourneau said:
If someone had told me, if anyone had told me, there is a specific law that says this is a crime.
I did not know. I’ve said this over and over again. Had I known, if anyone knows my personality. Just the idea, this would count as a crime.
During the Sunday Night interview, Letourneau became defensive when pressured by journalist Matt Doran to admit she “should have known better”. The now 56-year-old then repeatedly asked her husband, now 35, to admit he “was the boss” and pursued her, despite being 22 years his senior.
“Flaw me, I did the best I could,” Letourneau said.
The couple’s daughters also opened up for the first time about what it was like growing up in their unconventional family.
Audrey said:
It doesn’t feel different because it wasn’t brought to our attention. We grew up with it, so we adapted.
Today, Letourneau works as a paralegal at the same court where she faced trial 21 years ago. She hopes use her new skills in her fight to remove her name from the sex offenders’ registry.
Fualaau filed for separation from Letourneau in 2017, but later withdrew the request, despite admitting to Sunday Night there are problems within their marriage. The now 35-year-old said he had thought about leaving the relationship.
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