Posted on 05/20/2002 4:35:40 PM PDT by cmsgop
Jury Rules Against Fualaau In Civil Trial
May 20, 2002
By KOMO Staff & News Services
KENT - The Highline School District and Des Moines Police Department could not have prevented Mary Kay Letourneau from having sex with a former sixth-grade pupil, King County Superior Court jurors ruled Monday.
The verdict followed a nine-week trial in which former student Vili Fualaau's lawyer claimed the relationship was "torture, not true love," and left Fualaau suicidal and unemployable, with two young daughters he's ill-equipped to care for.
The relationship eventually earned Letourneau 7 1/2 years in prison for child rape.
When it began in the spring of 1996, she was 34, a mother of four having difficulties with her marriage.
Fualaau, who had suffered years of abuse at the hands of his own mother, was a precocious 12-year-old in Letourneau's class at Shorewood Elementary in Burien, a south Seattle suburb.
Throughout the trial, the police department and school district insisted the romance was so bizarre that no one could have predicted it. The district's lawyer said it began off school grounds after the academic year had ended.
Police argued that they simply had no evidence of sexual abuse until it was too late.
The defendants also contended the lawsuit was the brain-child of Fualaau's mother, Soona Vili, who they said had simply run out of other ways to profit from her son's sad tale. She collected - and promptly spent - about $180,000 for discussing the case on talk shows and with supermarket tabloids.
The family's lawyer, Cyrus Vance Jr., had suggested jurors award as much as $2.4 million, including about $500,000 for Soona Vili's suffering. Much of the trial focused on an incident June 19, 1996. At about 1:20 a.m., police discovered the couple in a minivan parked at the Des Moines Marina.
Letourneau initially told officers the boy was 18, raising suspicions that something sexual was going on. But back at the police station, Fualaau and Letourneau denied there had been any "touching." Instead, they said, Letourneau had been babysitting the boy and took him from her home after she and her husband had a fight. Officers contacted Soona Vili and, they say, described how they had discovered Letourneau and Fualaau. She told police to let the boy go home with his teacher. With no evidence of sex abuse, they complied.
Vance said the department should have followed up and told Soona Vili about officers' suspicions. Likewise, the school district should have done something to prevent the relationship, he said. Instead, about two months after the marina incident, Letourneau became pregnant with the couple's first daughter, Audrey. The second, Alexis, was conceived in January 1998, after Letourneau had pleaded guilty to child rape and received a 7 1/2-year prison term, which was suspended on condition she have no contact with Fualaau.
Besides the marina incident, which was reported to a district security officer, there were other things that should have tipped off school officials, Vance said. Fualaau had been seen driving Letourneau's car in the school parking lot and slow-dancing with the teacher in her classroom, in front of other students. Furthermore, a janitor once discovered them in a faculty bathroom with the lights off. Letourneau said the boy was having an attitude problem and that she tried to deal with it by turning off the light.
The district's lawyer, Mike Patterson, said each of the incidents appeared innocuous once explained. Letourneau said Fualaau had driven her car without permission, and that she danced with all the students.
Fualaau and Letourneau previously characterized their relationship as one of love, and even wrote a book together - "Un Seul Crime, L'Amour," or "Only One Crime, Love." Their story was also the subject of a USA Network movie, "All American Girl."
When he testified during the trial, Fualaau said he still believes Letourneau was the best thing that ever happened to him. But he said he wished their relationship had been different.
"When I was young, I wanted to have sex. I wanted to have sex with my teacher," he said. "I wasn't thinking."
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