A former student of the late Mary Kay Letourneau spoke out about the teacher’s sex scandal with her student-turned-husband Filet Fualaaurevealing the impact of the notorious Letourneau case that made headlines in the 1990s.
“It bothered me for a long time,” he said. Caitlin Steadwho was just 12 years old — just like Fualaau — when she enrolled at Shorewood Elementary School in Burien, Washington, in 1996.
“She was a mother figure to us because she was very nurturing,” Stead revealed of Letourneau, who was 34 and a married mother of four at the time, in an interview with New York Post Posted on Friday, January 24th. “And then we had to really process all of that when we’re just learning what sex is all about.”
Letourneau’s sexual involvement with her student Fualaau, now 41, caused shock when the news broke.
“What people didn’t understand was that we were sad,” Stead said, noting that “no one should have to deal with this” as an elementary school student. “We were trying to figure it out, and we missed our teacher.”
like In touch It was previously reported that Letourneau was arrested in 1997 and pleaded guilty to two counts of felony rape of a child in the second degree and spent three months in prison.
The former teacher was married before Steve Letourneau. The former couple shared four children together and divorced in 1999 after the arrival of her children from Fualaau.
Letourneau gave birth to her first child with Fualaau, daughter Audrey, in May 1997.
Despite her first stint in prison, Letourneau decided to keep in touch with Fualaau, resulting in the original seven-and-a-half year prison sentence being reinstated.
Letourneau welcomed her second child with Fualaau, daughter Georgia, in October 1998 while she was still incarcerated. The former teacher was eventually released in 2004.
Fualaau and Letourneau married in 2005, but separated more than a decade later. Fualaau filed for separation in May 2017 and was officially divorced in 2019.
The following year, on July 7, 2020, Letourneau died of cancer at the age of 58.
In a joint statement issued on X, previously Twitter, the Fualaau and Letourneau families said they were “deeply saddened” by her death, noting that they did “their best to care for her.”
“He lost a part of himself,” Fualaau’s friend said. the people In an additional statement. “He understands how bad everything was the way they got together. He’s not stupid. But he can’t completely turn off his feelings, and this is a big loss for him. He spoke to her right before she died, and they said everything they wanted to say.”
The friend added: “They didn’t talk every day, but she kept him updated on his cancer treatment.” “Initially, the talk was that she would beat the disease, that even though the prognosis was not good, she would fight with everything she had, and that she had a chance of survival.”
Fualaau now has a third daughter, Sofia, whom she welcomed in 2022.