Mary Kay Letourneau’s former student lover, who inspired ‘May December’ film, to become grandfather
Vili Fualaau, whose relationship at 12 years old with sixth-grade teacher Mary Kay Letourneau made national headlines, will become a grandfather at the age of 40.
It’s the latest development in the family tree that grew from Fualaau and Letourneau’s relationship, which inspired the new Netflix film “May December.”
Letourneau was arrested in 1997 when her husband, Steve Letourneau, found love letters between his wife and her underage pupil and a relative of the husband contacted police, per People.
Letourneau was arrested in Washington state on May 4, 1997, and pleaded guilty to two counts of child rape. While she awaited her sentencing, Letourneau gave birth to her first child with Fualaau, Audrey, on May 29, 1997.
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Initially, Letourneau’s sentence was reduced to six months. Two weeks after serving three months and being released, per the Journal of Law and Education, she was found again with the minor in February 1998.
While serving her second stint behind bars — this one seven years long — Letourneau gave birth to her second child at the Washington Corrections Center for Women. That girl — now-24-year-old Georgia — is expecting a child of her own, according to People.
“I’ve known since I was about 4 weeks,” Georgia told the magazine of the pregnancy in September. “I’m very excited to become a mother. I have an amazing mother to prepare me for these years to come.”
An Instagram post taken at Georgia’s baby shower, which shows Fualaau’s eldest daughter Audrey bending down to kiss her pregnant sister’s baby bump, revealed Georgia is expecting a boy.
Fualaau, a father of two at 15, married Letourneau in 2005. The pair ultimately separated in 2017 and officially divorced in 2019, a year before Letourneau died of cancer at 58 in 2020, People reported.
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Georgia said her late mother would be “really happy” about the pregnancy.
“I think maybe at first it would be kind of shocking because I am her baby, but after that, she’d be the most excited grandmother-to-be,” she told People.
Letourneau first became a grandmother in 2010 when her oldest son had a daughter, per the New York Daily News. It is unclear whether she has additional grandchildren from her other three children from her first marriage.
Georgia told People that Audrey and Fualaau have been “extremely supportive” of her pregnancy, with her dad “already buying baby stuff for me and giving me hand-me-downs from my baby sister.”
Last year, Fualaau welcomed his third child, named Sophia, with another woman whose identity the family has kept private. Georgia announced the pregnancy with an Instagram post on her private account at the time, writing, “Hi Sophia, I’m your big sister!”
“You’re so beautiful, I can’t wait to watch you grow!” Georgia wrote. “I’ll be right here by your side no matter what! I love you.”
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Like the identity of his third child’s mother, Fualaau has managed to keep a low profile in the years following Letourneau’s death.
Paparazzi were a constant presence in Fualaau and Letourneau’s lives long after Letourneau’s criminal trial and the couple’s marriage at a Washington state winery when Letourneau was 43 and Fualaau was 22, covered at the time by People.
In one of his final media appearances after Letourneau’s death, Fualaau was asked on “The Dr. Oz Show” what he would do if he were interested in a minor.
“I’d probably go and seek some help,” Fualaau said. “I couldn’t look at a 13-year-old and be attracted to that because it’s just not in my brain.”
In a 2018 interview on Channel Seven’s “Sunday Night in Australia,” taped months before the couple’s legal separation, host Matt Doran repeatedly asked Fualaau “who [was] the boss” in the couple’s initial romance.
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“Who was? Just say,” Letourneau said to Fualaau in the uncomfortable interaction.
“This is ridiculous,” Fualaau said after further pressing. “This is getting weird.”
Finally, the younger member of the pair relented, telling Doran, “I was the pursuer,” after sharing a glance with Letourneau.
The interview was used as inspiration for one of “May December’s” most harrowing scenes, in which the character played by Julianne Moore and loosely based on Letourneau chides the character based on Fualaau, played by Charles Melton.
Moore’s character repeatedly asks Melton’s, “Who was the boss? Who was in charge?”
Later, Melton’s character confronts Moore’s about who really was responsible for their relationship beginning.
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Anne Bremner, the Seattle attorney who successfully defended the Des Moines Police Department and the Highline School District against a lawsuit brought by Fualaau’s family in 2002, told Fox News Digital that Letourneau was “not a pedophile.”
Bremner and the embattled teacher would develop a friendship after the lawsuit, with Letourneau attending several of the attorney’s annual New Year’s parties.
“I was a prosecutor in special assault — I saw pedophile cases,” said Bremner, a former prosecutor for the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s office. “I also had civil cases where I sued pedophiles. But she wasn’t one — she just had him.”
The subject of who was the “pursuer” in the inappropriate school romance was broached repeatedly as the couple’s relationship was dissected in court, Bremner recalled.
Fualaau’s sexual activity before his relationship with Letourneau, the boy’s Samoan heritage and that culture’s tendency to be sexually active earlier in life, and the boy’s mature appearance were all topics broached in Letourneau’s criminal trial, the attorney recalled.
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Bremner told Fox News Digital that Letourneau and Fualaau’s relationship was that of “a love story, not a crime story.”
“The defense was that nothing would keep these two apart — and nothing did,” Bremner said.
“He loved her — there’s no question that was a love story. But what he went through left him very damaged. On the other hand, he’s got this wonderful family and a grandchild on the way,” Bremner said.
A King County jury would ultimately rule that neither Fualaau nor his mother, Soona Vili, should be financially compensated by the school district or the Des Moines police department for not sufficiently investigating the infamous relationship.
“We always took the position as prosecutors that a pedophile could never be stopped, that it was almost like a compulsion,” Bremner continued. “I don’t know of any pedophilia cases that I’ve been involved with that only had one victim.”
“This is a very complicated case — and I’m a psychiatrist’s kid,” Bremner said. “That’s why I was more understanding of the nuance in the case… I basically got to know her and wanted to help her over the years after my trial. I found her to be somebody that was exploited and misunderstood and I don’t in any way accept that what she did was okay — obviously it wasn’t.”
“She got out of jail — seven years, no good time. She wants to be back with the kid, the no contact order is lifted and they get married,” Bremner recalled. “At that point I said, ‘I guess we have to give them a chance, don’t we?'”
Bremner told Fox News Digital that “May December” was the best depiction of the couple’s romance she had seen.
“I thought it did well [covering] the dynamics and angst Villi and Mary felt about this,” she said.
Fualaau could not be reached for comment.
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