A Matter Of Hearts

Mary K. Letourneau sat on the steps in front of her home, staring west across a glorious sunset over Puget Sound. Inside with a friend was baby Audrey Lokelani, Mary's fifth child and her first with Vili Fualaau, the teenager she has become so infamous for loving. It was a breezy summer's eve, and she could smell the fresh-cut grass on her lawn. She squinted into a blazing horizon. "I had a dream last night," she said, speaking to a neighbor. "I dreamed I was sitting here watching the sunset. And I sat there and sat there, but the sun just wouldn't set."

That was last summer, before her life spun completely out of control, before it was again and again on Oprah and Dateline and Geraldo, before it was retold (and often mistold) in papers from the New York Times to the tabloids. Letourneau's relationship with Vili, who turns 15 in June, as well as her conviction and imprisonment, have drawn international attention. The BBC has come to Seattle to film a documentary. Her image has been an alluring paradox: at once darling suburban teacher and predatory monster; so blond, so pretty, so...dangerous to children? She is more complicated, of course, and soon several magazines will render her in brushstrokes instead of spray paint. But even here there is haste: Mirabella and Spin rushed out advance copies of their articles last week to preview salacious disclosures. Letourneau, in jail but hardly incommunicado, expected less trumpeting and more deliberation, since she had cooperated closely with both writers. For their part, the Fualaaus have sold the story and pictures of Vili to a tabloid, the Globe, for more than $20,000. Their decision was understandable--the family has struggled financially, and a radio host had already identified Vili early in the week--but even as it ran his picture, the paper labeled him the "boy she raped." When Mary sees it, she will think it a bit tacky.

She considers herself the victim of a collision of law and love. But if Mary Letourneau is a complex character in a complicated situation, is she any less guilty? Her new lawyer--a hotshot New Englander with an accent and a Ph.D.--is concocting an appeal in secret. More disclosures are sure to come, and several books are in the works. But could a mountain of paper make what she did O.K.? Is there any way to defend Mary? The key may lie in the meanderings of her heart.

There was a moment last year when Letourneau had some time to start a journal for Audrey so that when the little girl is older, she can understand this mess. At that time, last summer, the future didn't look so bleak to Letourneau. She was still talking to her other four children, her "angels," even though they were moving to Alaska with their dad Steven. True, her lawyer, David Gehrke, was telling her she had to plead guilty to "rape of a child." Such a ridiculous charge, she thought. Why couldn't everyone realize that Vili had come on to her for months? But Dave and his wife Susan were friends from the neighborhood, good people who assured her that Dave had obtained a good deal--a few months in jail, then a treatment program for "sex offenders." Another annoying term, Mary thought. She was still imagining a life with all five of her kids together as a family. She and Steve would divorce, but perhaps she and Vili--a sensitive, dreamy soul who had, to her surprise, become the love of her life--could wed. To this day, Mary likes to see the bright side.