Vili Fualaau is best known as the former student and ex-husband of sex offender Mary Kay Letourneau — but his story doesn't end there.
ABC NewsVili Fualaau, Mary Kay Letourneau, and Barbara Walters during an interview in 2015.
When Vili Fualaau was 12 years old, he bet his cousin $20 that he could seduce his teacher, Mary Kay Letourneau. But what started as a joke quickly became more serious. Shortly before Vili’s 13th birthday, the 34-year-old Letourneau kissed him — and she didn’t stop there.
Their inappropriate relationship expanded far beyond one night. What they called “love,” most people would call “sexual abuse” or outright “rape,” and Letourneau was arrested for statutory rape in 1997 when the relationship became public. By then, she was already pregnant with their first child.
But even though Letourneau went to prison and was ordered to stay away from her former student, it seemed that nothing could keep them apart. They later had a second child together and eventually got married, though they divorced shortly before Letourneau’s death in 2020.
Their relationship, marriage, and children all became the stuff of tabloid fodder. But who was the 12-year-old boy at the center of the scandal?
This is the story of Vili Fualaau.
How The Controversial Relationship Between Mary Kay Letourneau And Vili Fualaau Began
RedditVili Fualaau and Mary Kay Letourneau in an undated photograph.
Born on June 26, 1983, Vili Fualaau had a somewhat troubled start to life. He grew up in a rough area of Seattle, his father served time in prison for armed robbery, and he struggled to get along with his mother.
Vili Fualaau first met Mary Kay Letourneau when he was in second grade. Then, she was his teacher at Shorewood Elementary School in Burien, Washington. But their relationship would not become sexual until several years later, after Letourneau taught Vili’s sixth-grade class.
As the Seattle Times reported in 2001, Vili made a $20 bet with his cousin that he could “get” Letourneau, a married mother of four.
“I remember I used to like plan the next day, like, ‘What I was gonna do, what I was gonna say, what I was gonna like — what surprise I was gonna leave on her desk,'” Vili Fualaau recalled to Dateline in 2006.
Vili also wrote his teacher poetry, gave her drawings, and drew her into provocative conversations by asking questions like “Would you ever have an affair?” At the time, Vili was 12. Letourneau was in her 30s.
Though most teachers would have dismissed this as an innocuous schoolboy crush, to be ignored, Letourneau told Dateline: “We had a chemistry… he’s quite the man, and was back then actually.”
What had started as a childish game became something more serious as Vili and Letourneau spent more and more time together.
“Mary and I became really close,” Vili Fualaau said in a 2018 interview with Australia’s Sunday Night, “and I kinda forgot about the bet.”
A Shocking Pregnancy And An Explosive Scandal
Police PhotoMary Kay Letourneau was arrested for statutory rape in 1997.
Shortly before Vili Fualaau turned 13 years old in the summer of 1996, his sixth-grade teacher began pursuing a sexual relationship with him.
“The incident was a late night that it didn’t stop with a kiss,” Letourneau told ABC News in 2015. “And I thought that it would and it didn’t… I loved him very much, and I kind of thought, ‘Why can’t it ever just be a kiss?'”
Vili was far younger than the age of legal consent, which made his “affair” with his teacher statutory rape. The abuse continued throughout the summer, and then things took a twist. Letourneau became pregnant.
Vili was shocked by the news and told Letourneau to sleep with her husband to “cover it up” — not realizing that their child would likely look different from Letourneau’s other kids since Vili was of Samoan descent.
“I was thinking, what have I gotten myself into,” Fualaau later said, according to The Seattle Times. To ABC News, he later elaborated: “I don’t feel like I had the right support, the right help behind me… from my family, from anyone.”
In February 1997, Letourneau’s husband discovered love letters written between his wife and Vili. One of Letourneau’s relatives soon reported the inappropriate relationship to officials at Shorewood Elementary School, and Letourneau was quickly arrested for statutory rape on March 4, 1997.
By then, she was seven months pregnant.
Court TVMary Kay Letourneau never stopped pursuing Vili Fualaau, even after her arrest.
Incredibly, Mary Kay Letourneau claims that she had no idea that what she and Vili Fualaau were doing was a crime. To NBC News, she said, she thought that it was acceptable because Vili had given his consent. “I was really thinking there would be a fine, like pay a fine option,” she said.
But her actions were very illegal — and it soon exploded into a scandal.
Under the glare of the national media, Mary Kay Letourneau gave birth to Vili’s daughter Audrey, on May 29, 1997 (Vili’s mother received temporary custody rights). Three months later, Letourneau pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree child rape. And in November 1997, she was sentenced to 89 months — more than seven years — in prison.
“Your honor, I did something that I had no right to do, morally or legally,” Letourneau told the judge, according to an E! News article. “It was wrong. And I am sorry. I give you my word that it will not happen again.”
Letourneau served just six months of her sentence before she was released on parole. But shortly after she got out of prison in January 1998, her relationship with Vili Fualaau resumed where it had left off.
Vili Fualaau’s Mental Health Struggles
About a month after leaving prison, Mary Kay Letourneau was caught with Vili Fualaau in a car that contained baby clothes, groceries, $6,200 in cash, and Letourneau’s passport. Letourneau was quickly arrested.
By that point, she was already pregnant with her and Vili’s second child. But this evinced little sympathy from the judge, who ordered her to serve the remainder of her original sentence. He also forbade Vili from contacting her, though the two exchanged secret messages anyway. In 1998, they even released a book together that was published in France: Un Seul Crime, L’Amour (Only One Crime, Love), which described their relationship.
FIXOTUn Seul Crime, L’Amour was published in France.
But Mary Kay Letourneau’s prison sentence, which lasted until 2004, was a dark time for Vili Fualaau.
As his mother unsuccessfully sued the school district for negligence, Vili dropped out of high school, attempted suicide by smashing his arm through a glass window, and struggled with alcoholism and his mental health.
“I tried to get my mind away from everything,” he told People in 2004, shortly before Letourneau’s release. “I was partying, drinking too much.”
In his family’s failed 2002 lawsuit against the school, Vili’s mother also said he was “not all there” and he’d been hospitalized in July 2001 for “psychotic depression” on his therapist’s recommendation. At one point, Vili also testified that the “affair” had left him an emotional wreck and he was no longer in love with Letourneau, stating: “I just lost feelings for her.”
But the jury didn’t buy it. Later on, Vili Fualaau claimed that his mother and her lawyers had pressured him into saying that so he would get enough money to raise his children. And by the time that Letourneau’s release date rolled around, Fualaau publicly stated that he still loved her.
“I don’t know what my feelings are right now,” he told Seattle’s KING 5 News. “[I’m] kind of nervous. But I know that I do love her.”
Vili Fualaau And Mary Kay Letourneau’s Relationship After She Left Prison
AETVMary Kay Letourneau and Vili Fualaau got married in 2005. They stayed together for 14 years.
Shortly after Mary Kay Letourneau was released from prison in 2004, she and Vili Fualaau reunited after about seven years apart.
“I got to hold her,” Fualaau recalled, according to NBC News. “You know, I got to put my cheek against hers and got to hold her hand, and just hold her.”
The couple petitioned a judge to lift the no-contact order, which was granted. And in May 2005, 21-year-old Fualaau and 43-year-old Letourneau got married. Their two daughters served as flower girls.
By most accounts, they lived a fairly normal life — aside from a couple of “Hot for Teacher” nights that they hosted while Fualaau worked as a D.J. — as they focused on raising their daughters near Seattle.
But then, their story entered a new chapter. Fualaau and Letourneau separated in 2017 and divorced in 2019. Their friends claim that their love had simply faded over time. That said, they remained close. And as Letourneau died of cancer in 2020, Fualaau returned to her side.
“Vili moved back from California, gave up his life there, and for the last two months of Mary’s life he stood by her 24/7 taking care of her,” Letourneau’s attorney David Gehrke told TODAY in 2020. “So yes, they were divorced and they had their spats, but they were always in love with each other.”
In the time since Mary Kay Letourneau’s death, Vili Fualaau has continued to live his life. In 2022, he even had a third daughter (although the identity of the baby’s mother is not known). But he can’t quite escape what happened to him as a 12-year-old. In 2024, he spoke out against the film May December, which was loosely based on his story.
NetflixVili Fualaau has spoken out against the 2023 film May December, in which Julianne Moore plays Gracie Atherton-Yoo, a character loosely based on Mary Kay Letourneau.
“I’m offended by the entire project and the lack of respect given to me — who lived through a real story and is still living it,” Vili Fualaau told The Hollywood Reporter.
Just the fact that the movie was made, however, goes to show how much Vili Fualaau’s story continues to fascinate. Decades after he first bet his cousin he could seduce his teacher, he remains a subject of curiosity.
And Fualaau, who was just 12 years old at the time and unable to consent or profoundly understand what was happening, has advice for his younger self, which he expressed in 2018: “Don’t do it!” But Fualaau added: “I can’t regret my two daughters and the entire life that I’ve already lived.”
After reading about Vili Fualaau, discover the stories of other scandals, like how Lorena Bobbitt cut off her husband John’s penis in 1993. Or, go inside the shocking murder trial of the Menendez brothers, who murdered their affluent parents in 1989 after allegedly suffering years of abuse.
