When Mary Kay Letourneau Fualaau was forced to go public in 1997 with an affair she was having with her former sixth grade student, Vili Fualaau, after she became pregnant with his child, it was the teacher-student sex scandal heard around the world.

At the time, Mary was a 34-year-old, married teacher in Seattle, who already had four children of her own. Vili was just 13 years old. Mary was arrested and served seven and a half years in prison.

Today, Mary is 53 and Vili is 31. The couple is still together and are about to celebrate their 10th wedding anniversary. The two daughters they have together are now teenagers -- older than Vili was when the affair started.

Mary and Vili sat down for an exclusive interview with Barbara Walters to talk about how they managed to stay together all these years, despite their very public and forbidden relationship.

“If it wasn't strong enough in the beginning, it wouldn't have carried through those years,” Mary told Walters.







TIMELINE: Mary Kay Letourneau Fualaau, Vili Faulaau's Relationship



PHOTO: Mary Kay Letourneau Faulaau and Her Now Teenage Daughters



This interview is a part of Barbara Walters' upcoming new series, "American Scandal," on Investigation Discovery, which revisits some of her most famous interviews.

During the interview, Mary described how her and Vili's relationship moved from emotional to sexual when he was in middle school. When she was his teacher, she began to spend more and more time with Vili to help him develop what she thought was a gift for drawing. By the end of the school year, she said the two had bonded. By summer, they started having an affair.

"The incident was a late night that it didn't stop with a kiss," Mary said. "And I thought that it would and it didn't."

When asked if she felt guilty or disgusted with herself for having the affair, Mary said, "I loved him very much, and I kind of thought, 'why can't it ever just be a kiss?'"

By the end of summer 1996, Mary was pregnant with Vili's child, their first daughter. Shortly after the new year in 1997, Mary's husband discovered a love letter Mary had written. The authorities were alerted, and Mary was arrested.

The story of the Seattle teacher-student sex scandal caught wide national attention. She gave birth to her and Vili’s first child, Audrey, on May 29, 1997. Three months later, Mary pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree child rape. On Friday, Nov. 14, 1997, she was sentenced to 89 months in prison.

Mary was paroled after serving six months on the condition that she stay away from Vili and attend counseling sessions for sex offenders. But within a month of being paroled, she was back in prison for ignoring the court order and her sentence was reinstated. While on parole, Mary became pregnant again with Vili's child and gave birth to a second daughter, Georgia, behind bars on October 16, 1998. Mary's husband then filed for divorce and moved their four children to Alaska.







For Vili, the journey to get where he is today has not been easy. He said he battled depression over the years.

“I’m surprised I’m still alive today,” Vili said. “I went through a really dark time.”

Vili grew up impoverished without a father and had a tumultuous relationship with his mother. When his affair with Mary began, and after she became pregnant with his child, Vili said he felt that he had no support system to help him through it.

“It was a huge change in my life, for sure,” he said. “I don’t feel like I had the right support, the right help behind me ... from my family, from anyone, in general. I mean, my friends couldn't help me because they had no idea what it was like to be a parent, I mean, because we were all 14, 15.”

Vili said he had counseling sessions, but even then he struggled because he said counselors wanted him to take antidepressant medication to "even him out."

“I don’t even think the counselors knew how to deal with it. It was just weird,” he said. “I was like, ‘Why do I need to be on an antidepressant pill?’ And they said it was to level you out so they can have a conversation with you. ... It just kind of just really annoyed me through the years.”

Vili was forbidden from visiting Mary in prison, but he said it would have helped him if he had been able to talk to her during that time.

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