Convicted pedophile Mary Kay Letourneau, 51, and victim-husband Vili Fualaau, 31, will celebrate their tenth wedding anniversary on television.
The notorious couple has granted ABC News a 20/20 interview with Barbara Walters, scheduled to air this Friday evening, April 10, 2015.
Mary Kay became an unwilling media sensation in the 1990s when she was convicted of child rape for engaging in sexual relations with the then 13-year-old Vili.
Their relationship started when she was a 34-year-old unhappily married schoolteacher and mother of four children and he was a student in her sixth-grade class.
She served almost eight years in prison and lost her teaching certificate for having sex with the underage boy.
Letourneau twice became pregnant by her young lover prior to imprisonment, giving birth to two daughters, Audrey and Georgia, who are both now teenagers. She was released from prison in 2005 and, less than a year later, married Vili who was by then an adult.
During most of their marriage, the two kept a relatively low profile, generally avoiding media attention. However, Mary Kay believes that their anniversary will inevitably trigger a renewed flurry of publicity and believes the interview the best way to handle it.
“It’s our 10-year anniversary and we already know that, no matter how protective we are, that there’s going to be a wave of intrusion in our life right now that we can’t stop,” she tells Barbara Walters. “So it’s about doing the most responsible thing to protect our girls for the inevitable.”
In their 20/20 interview, the couple will discuss how they have managed to make their marriage work despite a 20-year age difference. Now mature, Fualaau admits they had their ups and downs but observes, “I don’t think there’s ever a full 10 good years of marriage. But, you know, what matters is how you pull through the bad times.”
He recalls being confused by the responsibilities of parenthood when he was himself just a child, saying, “I don’t feel like I had the right support or 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 Fualaau also discusses his struggles with alcoholism, and Mary Kay Letourneau Fualaau says she will try to have her sex offender status lifted so she can once again teach schoolchildren.
DENISE NOE
