- On July 6, Mary Kay Letourneau died of cancer at the age of 58. According to her lawyer, her ex-husband Vili Fualaau was by her side.
- Letourneau was a Seattle elementary school teacher who went to prison for sexually assaulting Fualaau, then her 12-year-old student. They married upon her release.
- Today, Fualaau is a father of two daughters, and lives in Seattle.
When Vili Fualaau was 12-years-old, he found himself at the center of a massive scandal—and many would say, tragedy. Now 37, Fualaau's name remains attached to the same story.
On July 6, Mary Kay Letourneau—Fualaau's former elementary school teacher who was convicting of raping him, and later married him upon her prison release—passed away of colon cancer. Fualaau and Letourneau, who share two daughters, divorced in 2019. According to TODAY, Fualaau remained by her side during the last two months of her life life.
"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," attorney David Gehrke told TODAY. "So yes, they were divorced and they had their spats, but they were always in love with each other."
If you were a newswatcher in the 1990s, then the story of Letourneau and Fualaau is likely already familiar. In 1997, it was publicly revealed that Fualaau—then in sixth grade—was repeatedly sexually assaulted by his elementary school teacher, Mary Kay Letourneau. At the time, Letourneau was a married mother of four children. She had taught Fualaau in the second and sixth grades; Fualaau was a year older than her son.
On June 19, 1996, police caught Fualaau and Letourneau in the back of a parked minivan, sparking a national scandal. Eventually, Letourneau would be convicted of rape, and serve a seven-year prison sentence.
While on trial, Letourneau had her first daughter with Fualaau; their second daughter was born while she was in prison. By the time he was 15, Fualaau was a father of two. In a later interview with Barbara Walters, Fualaau expressed feeling adrift after she went to prison, and he was left to raise his children alongside his mother, Soona Vili.
"I don't feel like I had the right support or the right help behind me. From my family, from anyone in general. I mean, my friends couldn't help me because they had no idea what it was like to be a parent, I mean, because we were all 14, 15," Fualaau said during the 2015 interview.
Upon her release from prison in 2005, Letourneau and Fualaau married in front of 250 guests, with daughters Audrey and Georgia serving as flower girls. Letourneau lost custody of her other four children, who moved in with their father, Steven Letourneau Jr.
Both Letourneau and Fualaau defined their controversial relationship as consensual, and wrote a book Un Seul Crime, L’Amour or Only One Crime, Love detailing their experiences. "I'm not a victim," he told Inside Edition in 1999. "I’m not ashamed of being in love with Mary Kay.”
However, while their relationship was often framed as a "forbidden love story" in media reports, it's important to remember that Fualaau was a minor incapable of providing consent in a sexual relationship with an adult.
Certainly, that's how Vili, Fualaau's mother, felt from the very start. "What happened was morally wrong," Vili testified in 2002. In her testimony, Vili revealed her son, then a teenager, struggled with alcoholism and suicidal ideation. "She was married and this was a teenage boy. I've lost my son. I lost my sweet little boy who could draw. I knew he would grow up, and he wouldn't be my little boy, but I didn't know I'd lose him at 12."
Here's what to know about where Fualaau is today.
When he was 33, Fualaau filed for separation in 2017.
“Vili was the one who filed a petition for separation, which is usually a precursor for filing for divorce,” Letourneau's lawyer, Gehrke, confirmed to People in 2017.
However, Fualaau and Letourneau continued to live together—and even conducted an extensive interview about their family for Australia's Sunday Night news program. While speaking to the reporter, Fualaau explained his decision to marry Letourneau: "I wanted both my kids to have both parents under the same roof, something I'd never had. I did it for them." He also admitted that he thought of splitting with Letourneau "every now and then," but said he "didn't want to talk about that."
Two years later, in 2019, their divorce was finalized.
His daughters, Georgia and Audrey, call him a "friend-dad."
Audrey Lokelani Fualaau is 22, and Georgia is 21. According to Inside Edition in 2015, they graduated from the same school district where their mother used to teach.
For many years, the girls were raised by their grandmother, Soona Vili, who had an understandably complicated relationship with Letourneau. "I can't say I hate Mary," Vili said, while testifying in 2002. "Just a couple of weeks ago my granddaughter turned around to me and asked, 'Do you love my Mary mommy, Grandma?' And I'm supposed to tell her 'Yeah, I hate your mother?' I can't. I can't. And looking at my granddaughters, I can't consciously say I hate this woman."
In 2018, Audrey and Georgia went on the record with Australia's Sunday Night news program focusing on the "most talked about family on earth," as the show called them. "We grew up with it. We're adapted to it," Audrey, the older of the two girls, said of her family's notoriety.
At the time, Audrey was 21, and aware of her dad's youth. She described him as a "friend-dad." Today, the girls no longer live with their parents.
Fualaau spun as a DJ under the name DJ Headline.
Fualaau performed in the Seattle area under the fitting name DJ Headline, perhaps a nod to his own time in the headlines. Though he once regularly posted about his gigs online, Fualaau has since ceased.
To this day, he grapples with regret.
When speaking to Australia's Sunday Night, Fualaau was asked to give advice to his 12-year-old self. Fualaau was honest: "Don't do it," he said, laughing. "I can't regret my two daughters and the entire life I've already lived. I learned to regret is a bad thing. It's my journey through life. I gotta live it out," Fualaau continued.
The family shared a statement with NBC News upon Letourneau's death.
"We are deeply saddened to share the very difficult news that our beloved Mary passed away peacefully on July 6th 2020 after a six month battle since being diagnosed with stage IV, or metastatic, cancer. Mary fought tirelessly against this terrible disease. It is in that spirit that we ask for privacy and respect for our desire to focus on the road ahead for all of us who make up Mary’s collective family. We ask that our boundaries and need for privacy be honored with continued kindness and understanding," the statement read, per NBC.
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![ina garten and jeffrey](https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/jeffrey-garten-and-ina-garten-attend-the-barefoot-under-the-news-photo-1713807458.jpg?crop=1.00xw:0.668xh;0,0&resize=360:* "2011 "Barefoot Under The Stars" Benefit")
