American teacher who raped student leaves jail
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-08-05 15:19

Former teacher Mary Letourneau was released from prison on Wednesday after serving seven years for raping her former sixth-grade student. The now 21-year-old man asked a judge to drop a court order barring contact between them.

Mary LeTourneau sits in a courtroom at the Regional Justice Center in Kent, Washington in this November 14, 1997 file photo. LeTourneau, a former teacher, left prison on Wednesday, August 5 after serving seven years for raping her former sixth-grade student. The now 21-year-old man asked a judge to drop a court order barring contact between them. [Reuters]

Lawyers for Vili Fualaau filed a motion in state Superior Court arguing that Fualaau, as an adult, should be free to associate with his former lover Letourneau, with whom he has two children, so long as no crime is committed.

"He is requesting the judge lift the lifetime 'no contact' order and remove the condition that Ms. Letourneau not have contact with him," said Andrea Beall, a law partner of Fualaau's attorney, Scott Stewart.

In numerous interviews over the years, Letourneau, 42, and Fualaau, who fathered two daughters with her, have expressed their love for each other despite her guilty plea to two counts of second-degree child rape.

"He does not fear Mary K. Letourneau," Fualaau's lawyers wrote in the court motion, adding, "There was no allegation of forcible compulsion on the part of Mary Letourneau."

The Fualaau family also sought cash payments from Burien, Washington's Highline School District and police in nearby Des Moines in a lawsuit in 2000 claiming officials failed to protect Fualaau from Letourneau, saying this caused him to have numerous emotional problems. A jury rejected that argument.

Des Moines police found Fualaau, then 12, parked in a van with Letourneau, then 34, late one night in 1996 but chose not to file a report after phoning Fualaau's mother, who asked them to let Letourneau take him home.

Letourneau's husband later divorced her and moved to Alaska with their four children, now aged 10 to 19.

Letourneau was sentenced to prison in late 1997, pregnant with Fualaau's child. She was paroled in January 1998 but was barred from contact with him.

But she was arrested less than a month later when she and Fualaau were caught in her car at 3 am after a night at the movies. Letourneau was sent back to serve the rest of her term in prison, where she bore his second child, confirming they had resumed their sexual relationship.

Their affair sparked a torrent of media coverage, including books and a television film. Fualaau for years denied he was a victim.

The couple exchanged letters while Letourneau was in prison, where she also had numerous visits with their daughters who were raised for years by his mother.

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