Former lover wants to see freed schoolteacher

August 5, 2004 - 9:34AM

The former child lover of US schoolteacher Mary Kay Letourneau today asked a court to be allowed to see her again, just hours after her release from jail, lawyers said.

Lawyers for the now-21-year-old Vili Fualaau, who fathered two children by Letourneau after the two became lovers when he was just 12, filed a motion asking for a court order barring the two from seeing each other to be lifted, the office of attorney Scott Stewart told AFP.

"He is now an adult and, as an adult, is requesting that the court allow him to associate with other adults of his own choosing, specifically Mary K Letourneau," the motion states.

The document, filed with King County District Court, says the young man is not threatened by the 42-year-old Letourneau and that the only basis for criminal charges was Fualaau's age at the time of the offence.

Letourneau was earlier released from jail near the north-western US city of Seattle, Washington, after completing a seven-and-a-half-year sentence for child rape.

Despite her status as a registered sex offender, her release immediately prompted a flurry of speculation over whether she would soon be reunited with her former child lover.

The teacher was convicted in 1997 of raping a minor after having a consensual sexual affair with her pupil starting when he was 12 and she was 34.

In May 1997, she gave birth to a daughter, three months before pleading guilty and being sentenced to seven and a half years in prison.

After six months, she was released on parole on condition that she received treatment and not see her underage lover again.

But in February 1998, police caught the couple having sex in a van and Letourneau was sent back to prison to serve out her entire sentence. She gave birth to a second daughter in prison in October 1998.

The divorced Letourneau has always maintained that the relationship was true love and that she was not a child molester, saying she wanted to spend her life with Fualaau.

- AFP

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/08/05/1091557957898.html