A love like no other

When you hear them tell it, nothing about this story is what you’d expect—starting with how it all began. Though Mary was a grown woman and Vili was a sixth grader, they both insist he was the one who put the moves on her.

Vili Fualaau: I think about the moves I made.  I remember I used to like plan the next day, like “What I was gonna do, what I was gonna say, what I was gonna like—what surprise I was gonna leave on her desk.”

Vili says he had no trouble attracting girls his own age, and didn’t see why his teacher should be any different.

Vili Fualaau: And so I was like, “Okay.  Lemme see what I can do.”  You know?  So I started doing the same thing with her.  And—

Mary Fualaau: And I ignored you.

Vili Fualaau: Tried to.

Mary Fualaau: Did.

Vili Fualaau: Tried to.  (Chuckles)

Mary Fualaau: Mmmm.

Mary says she tried to keep focused on her teaching, but Vili’s very deliberate attempts at seduction made that difficult.

Mary Fualaau: It was really a big—it was great, great frustration that I have a job.  And I was determined to do it.  And he wasn’t taking it seriously. 

Josh Mankiewicz, Dateline correspondent: Well, he was 13.

Mary Fualaau: Yeah.

Mankiewicz: I mean when you say that, you’re kind of expecting him to act and have some responsibilities that an adult would have.  And at the time, he was NOT an adult.  He was 13.

Mary Fualaau: Yeah. There was an air about him that was older.

Young as he was, Vili seemed to have an intuition for how to woo a much older woman, who by her account, was trapped in a chilly marriage.

Mankiewicz: How did you make her fall in love with you?

Mary says it was all about visual contact - long intense gazes from her student’s soulful brown eyes. Vili says he also scored points by giving her poems and drawings, even by starting provocative conversations.

Vili Fualaau:  I asked her if she would ever have an affair? You know, to see if I had a chance.

Mary says she tried to use that as a teaching moment, advising young Vili to look up ‘affair’ in the dictionary.

Mary Fualaau: I just was afraid that it might something in the conversation is like, okay he’s like coming too close.  And finally I just—“Me personally, no.”

Mankiewicz: So you asked her and she said, “No.”

Vili Fualaau: Yeah.

Mankiewicz: And you thought what? “I can fix that.”

Vili Fualaau: I did. (laughter)

Vili says he wasn’t a virgin at the time and he was confident Mary would be his next lover.

Vili Fualaau:  I wanted her. So I wasn’t gonna stop. And I was gonna try and do it in… I don’t know, was I aggressive? Or was I pretty much respectful?

Mary Fualaau: He was definitely forceful with his advances.

Mankiewicz:  And you were attracted to him?

Mary Fualaau: We really got along well. And I was trying to leave it at a level of—like, “Gee I really think you’re great.” But there was something different though. We had a chemistry that—and the way our heads worked…

Mankiewicz: Back when this first broke in the headlines, I think lots of people understand how a 13-year-old would get a crush on his teacher. I think what people didn’t understand—and the question everybody was asking then, and that I’m gonna now ask you is: How does a 34 year old woman fall for a 13 year old boy?

Mary Fualaau: Well, he’s quite the man, and was back then actually.

It’s a version of events that will no doubt infuriate a lot of child psychologists and law enforcement officers—and probably some of you viewers and readers too. How could a 13-year-old, no matter how “manly,” be an appropriate partner for a grown woman? Under the law, of course, he can not be. 

Mary concedes she knew it would be wrong to let the relationship go any further, but she says as soon as the school year ended, she and Vili did cross that line. It happened after the two of them ate dinner alone at a restaurant called Huckleberry Square. Afterwards, in the parking lot, they say, it was Vili who leaned over and started their first kiss.

Vili Fualaau: I thought that kiss was only gonna last for like a couple seconds.  But it ended up lasting for like 30 minutes.  Could’ve lasted longer, but I had to go home.  So then I got in trouble when I got home.  It was like 11:30 at night?

Mary Fualaau: Mmm.

Vili Fualaau: Way past my curfew.

Over the next few months, Vili would be missing curfew a lot. They saw each other secretly all through the summer—and began sleeping together, even sometimes at Mary’s home. Then, in his seventh grade year, though he was at another school, Vili would stop back at Shorewood elementary in the afternoons to meet up with the married woman he now considered his girlfriend.

Mary Fualaau: It was very clear that we wanted to be together, and it was serious.

Perhaps it’s understandable that Vili wasn’t concerned about all this leading to serious trouble...

Mankiewicz: Did you have any second thoughts at that point? Did you think “I’m gonna get in trouble or I could get her in trouble?”

Vili Fualaau: The most I really was afraid of was getting a whuppin’ from my mom.

But Mary’s reaction is a little harder to grasp.

Mankiewicz: What were you worried about?

Mary Fualaau: His mother getting angry.

Mankiewicz: That’s it?

Mary Fualaau: Uh-huh (Affirms).

Mankiewicz:   You weren’t thinking to yourself, “I could be fired. I could go to jail.”

Mary Fualaau: Oh, no. There wasn’t a time that I thought or he thought that, “Oh, you could go to prison for that.”

Mankiewicz: Ok, I understand that he didn’t think that, but you never thought that?

Mary Fualaau: No I wasn’t. I thought, “Gee you know this doesn’t look good.” You know? Just being a teacher.

She claims she’d been thinking of leaving teaching anyway. The romance intensified as the months passed. Then that winter, Mary got the biggest news yet: she was going to have Vili’s baby.

Mankiewicz: What went through your mind?

Mary Fualaau: Well, that's kind of a sensitive subject. The truth is I felt enormous—freedom— just I can’t even describe.

In a few months she’d be having a baby who probably wasn’t going to look much like Steve Letourneau. That meant freedom, she says, because now she would have no choice but to seek the divorce she’d been too scared to ask for.

Mary Fualaau: When I was pregnant, it was like, there it is. Just—just was so final.

Mankiewicz: When you found out Mary was pregnant, what did you think?

Vili Fualaau: Course I didn’t know what to think.

Mary and Vili say abortion was not a serious option. And for a brief while they imagined they and the baby could be together as a family.

Mary Fualaau: It just works for us. And it did back then. And it wasn’t definitely was frowned upon in a very serious, serious way.

Mankiewicz: It was more than frowned upon.

Mary Fualaau: Okay. Yeah.

How could she not know it was a crime?  Back in 1997 there hadn’t been a lot of notorious cases in the news of female teachers prosecuted for consensual sex with underage boys.

Mary Fualaau: It was actually my ex-husband had said, “Ha. My divorce attorney says that you can be charged with a felony.”  And I was like, “felony?”

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