Exclusive | Mary Kay Letourneaus sex abuse of then-12-year-old Vili Fualaau literally messed up entire class, ex-student says
Infamous child-rapist teacher Mary Kay Letourneau traumatized her students when she was caught abusing one of their sixth-grade classmates — and for some, the scars remain nearly three decades later.“It f–ked me up for a long time,” said Caitlin Steed, who was a 12-year-old at Shorewood Elementary School in Burien, Wash., in 1996 when her teacher was caught having sex with classmate Vili Fualaau.“She was a mother figure for us because she was so nurturing,” Steed told The Post of Letourneau, then a 34-year-old married mother of four.“And then we had to process all of this really when we’re just learning what sex is all about.“I think a lot of us ended up in counseling,” said Steed, now 41.
“She literally messed up an entire class of sixth graders.”Letourneau began sexually abusing Vili when he was her 12-year-old student, with the pair first caught in a minivan.She was eventually sentenced to more than seven years in prison for child rape.
Along the way, she became pregnant by Fualaau twice by the time he was 15, despite multiple court orders aimed at keeping them apart.The pair ended up having two daughters.As the case grew into an international scandal, students at the school had to deal with news trucks in their parking lots and almost daily articles in newspapers.“What people didn’t get is that we were sad,” Steed said.
“We were trying to make sense of it, and we missed our teacher.”By the time Letourneau was released from prison, the pair had two daughters, Fualaau was 21, and he petitioned the court to allow them to see each other.The restraining order against Letourneau was dropped, and the couple married in 2005.
They settled in Washington and raised daughters Audrey and Georgia.The marriage lasted until 2017, when Fualaau filed for official separation.The couple remained amicable co-parents until her death from cancer in 2020.
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