To ‘celebrate’ their 10-year wedding anniversay, Barbara Walters has done a sit-down interview with convicted statutory rapist and child sex offender Mary Kay Letourneau and her victim, husband and former student Vili Fualaau.

Warning: This post features details of child sexual abuse that could be triggering for some readers.

Most of us remember the story. Back in 1997, 35-year-old Seattle school teacher Mary Kay Letourneau was sent to prison for seven and a half years for the statutory rape of her 12-year-old student, Vili Fualaau.

Letourneau had known Fualaau since he was in Year Two, began seducing him when he was 12, and sexually abused and raped him for the first time not long after.

Fualaau with Letourneau while she was in prison. Image

After becoming pregnant with Fualaau’s child, Letourneau was initially convicted of the second degree rape of a minor (statutory rape) and sentenced to seven months in prison, provided she agreed to cut off all contact with the victim she had been abusing. Yet just one month after her release from jail, Letourneau was caught sexually abusing Fualaau in her car. Having violated her parole, Letourneau was sent to prison for seven and a half years – but she was already pregnant with her victim’s second child, and gave birth to the daughter while incarcerated.

Read more: “The hardest part wasn’t my brother’s abuse… It’s that it was covered up.”

Upon her release in 2004, Fualaau, who had been struggling with depression and alcoholism since his abuse, requested that the no-contact order be revoked, so that he could conintue a relationship with the woman who had seduced and repeatedly raped him, the first time as a 12-year-old. The two married in 2005, and have been together ever since.

And now Barbara Walters has done a sit-down interview with the pair, to discuss, among other things, ‘how they make their marriage work in spite of their age difference’.

Because what better way to celebrate the 10-year wedding anniversay of a child rapist and her victim than with a glossy sit-down interview?

Letourneau, Fualaau and Walters. Image: ABC

Um, what?

Why, WHY, since this case first hit the news almost 20 years ago, has it been treated as a tale of star-crossed lovers and not for what it truly is: A child sex offender who groomed and then sexually abused a young boy?

It makes no difference that the two ending up marrying – this is a child who was GROOMED and then RAPED by a sexual abuser. But since the two married, the story of how they came together has been constantly pushed to the sidelines, like an uncomfortable fuzzy fact that happened too long ago to remember. Like an adversity from their past that they survived. There’s been countless news stories, a tele-movie and magazine articles showing the two embracing and smiling together. Their story has become entertainment, and instead of inciting outrage, it seems to only incite fascination – an outcome that would almost certainly be the opposite if a 35-year-old man had raped a 12-year-old girl.

We obviously cannot speculate on Fualaau’s mindset, or the effect his abuse might have had on him. But he admitted to dropping out of school and to struggles with alcoholism and depression, had two children and became the world’s most recognisable victim of child sex abuse – all before he was 14. That can’t have been easy. The fact that he went on to marry the woman who had been grooming, seducing and abusing him since he was a child is a worrying one – but it’s something that needs to be dealt with by mental helath professionals. It shouldn’t be constantly splashed across the media as bizarre entertainment.

We shouldn’t be fascinated by the story of Mary Kay Letourneau and Vili Fualaau, we should be outraged by it. And seeing a photo of a smiling Barbara Walters sitting next to the couple should make all of us incredibly uncomfortable.

As such, I’ve made a few adjustments to the press release ABC’s 20/20 has released about the interview. They seem to be promoting the interview as some kind of juicy tell-all with a couple who have overcome a lot together – I thought I’d add in a few extra details to bring it back to reality (my additions are in brackets):

The interview will air in the US on 20/20 this Friday.