How the Media Turned Child Rape Into a 'Tryst' for Mary Kay Letourneau

In 1998, Mary Kay Letourneau appeared on the cover of People Magazine with her first child, Audrey. Bathed in warm light, with her blond hair softly curling and her brown eyes doleful, Letourneau could easily have been confused with the subject of a generic Sears portrait, if you didn’t read the accompanying headline: “The Teacher and the 6th Grader: Their Bizarre Story of Obsessive Love.” “Pregnant again after trysting with her former pupil, Mary Kay Letourneau, 36, is back in prison — and still defiant,” the cover line read, beneath a line about Bruce Willis and Demi Moore’s battle with their former nanny.

This language, of course, was woefully inaccurate: Letourneau, who died of cancer Tuesday at 58, did not “tryst” with her former sixth-grade pupil, Vili Fualauu, with whom she first had sex when she was 34 and he was 13. Despite the couple’s claims that the relationship was consensual and that they were deeply in love, according to any moral or legal definition Letourneau had raped Fualaau, and putting her beatific maternity photo on the cover of People Magazine would be akin to publishing beefcake prison shots of Jeffrey Epstein.

Yet this was not how people viewed the case in 1998. The media covered Letourneau not as a sexual predator, but either as a subject of prurient tabloid interest, on par with the domestic disputes of the stars of Die Hard and G.I. Jane; or as a tragic lover, ensnared in an ill-fated romance that society was simply unable to understand. (Often, as the People cover demonstrates, it was a combination of the two.) Perhaps more than any other figure in recent history, the media coverage of Mary Kay Letourneau is responsible for perpetuating the gendered double standard associated with child rape, or the idea that, while a male teacher having sex with an underage female pupil is reprehensible, a female teacher sleeping with an underage male pupil is not only forgivable, but worthy of a high five.

To scholars of mid-Nineties tabloid ephemera, the details of the case are well-known: Letourneau, a teacher in Seattle, Washington, met Fualaau when he was in her sixth-grade classroom (a little-regarded yet unspeakably icky footnote to the story is that she taught him when he was in second grade as well). They began what her obituary in the New York Times refers to as a “sexual relationship” in 1996, when she was 34 and he was 13, resulting in the birth of two daughters. Letourneau initially pleaded guilty to charges of second-degree rape, serving a reduced sentence of three months, only to return to prison for a seven-year sentence after violating a court order to keep away from Fualaau. When she was released in 2004, she was once again court-ordered to keep away from Fualaau; once again, she fought this order, and the two wed in 2005.

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Perhaps the sad ending to Letourneau’s story can be instructive in that regard: she spent the last few years of her life working as a legal secretary, cashing in on her notoriety by granting the occasional interview and hosting “Hot for teacher” night at a local bar. She and Fualaau separated in 2019. Apparently, to the end, Letourneau viewed her own narrative through the same lens as the 1990s tabloid media: “The cards were stacked against them, but they managed to have a long-term marriage,” a source close to the family told People after their split. “She still looks at their relationship as this amazing love story.”

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/mary-kay-letourneau-vili-fualauu-relationship-media-child-rape-tryst-1025466/