How Patriarchy Protects the Female Predator
And Why Men Don’t Mind
In 1996, the world met a 34-year-old Seattle teacher and married mother of four, Mary Kay Letourneau. When her illicit affair with a then sixth-grade student, Vili Fualaau, leaked to the public, Letourneau quickly became a household name. A King County police report recounted officers’ discovery of the pair presumably engaged in sexual intercourse in a parked car. Fualaau was 12 years of age at the time. Both denied any sexual contact, despite providing a fake birthday for Fualaau and lying about how they knew each other. Police took the two to the precinct where the minor’s mother instructed officers to return her son to his teacher. And so, they did. However, she maintains police withheld crucial information, mainly the details of their backseat discovery.
Letourneau was finally arrested in March 1997 when a relative of her husband contacted authorities over the unfinished affair. She pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree child rape and entered into a plea agreement that allowed her to serve half of a six-month plea deal, a fraction of her sentence. She somehow dodged the sex offender registry but agreed not to contact Fualaau, their child whom she birthed while awaiting sentencing, or her other four children. However, just weeks after her release, police would find Letourneau and Fualaau in a parked car yet…
