The real-life story behind the controversial film May December is almost stranger than fiction.
In 1996, a sexual relationship between a teacher, Mary Kay Letourneau, 34, and her student, 12-year-old Vili Fualaau, made headlines around the world.
The infamous affair – which was actually statutory rape – began when Letourneau started ‘nurturing’ Fualaau’s artistic talent.
WATCH: Mary Kay Letourneau talks about falling in love with her student Vili Fualaau. Article continues below video.
Their relationship was discovered in 1997 when Letourneau’s husband Steve stumbled across love letters his wife had stashed away. What he didn’t know was she was also pregnant with Fualaau’s baby.
Devastated, Steve couldn’t bring himself to turn his wife in to the police. Instead, it was a relative who called Fualaau’s school.
The jig was finally up for Letourneau’s ‘May December’ romance, an age-old term for an amorous relationship between two people with a considerable age difference.
Letourneau was arrested and a few months later, she gave birth to a baby named Audrey. Fualaau continued to stick by his teacher-turned-lover.
“I don’t feel that this is a crime. My son does not feel victimised,” his mother, Soona Vili, told The Seattle Times.
The student echoed this sentiment in a 1997 interview, claiming he wasn’t a “victim”.
“My life is going to be fine. Mary didn’t harm me in any way,” he said. “Who are they to say I’m too young to know anything when they don’t even know me?”
Letourneau pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree rape of a child. She was sentenced to seven years, but would be paroled after just six months, under one condition: she’d never contact Fualaau again.
“I give you my word,” Letourneau told the judge. “It will not happen again.”
She violated her parole in 1998 after police found them together in a car. Fualaau was 14.
Her original sentence was reinstated and Letourneau remained behind bars until 2004. During this second stint in prison she gave birth to another child fathered by Fualaau.
By Letourneau’s release, Fualaau was 21 and had reached the age of consent. They married in 2005.
In an interview with People, Letourneau claimed they were just a “normal couple”. And in 2015, the pair sat down for an interview with Barbara Walters, where she grilled them on the “abuse”.
“I loved him very much,” Letourneau said.
However, it wasn’t to last. After 12 years of marriage, Fualaau filed for separation from Letourneau in 2017.
“I’m convinced they were totally in love,” Letourneau’s lawyer David Gehrke told People.
“Sometimes, people who are totally in love have trouble staying in love.”
Letourneau was diagnosed with cancer and died in 2020 at the age of 58. Fualaau was at his ex-wife’s deathbed.
Their relationship lives on though, in the form of a new Hollywood blockbuster – May December.
The film, starring Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore, follows an actress who studies a woman who began dating her partner when he was 13, after she is cast to play the woman in a movie.
Fualaau, 40, has moved on since his ex-wife’s death. He welcomed a third child from another relationship in 2022 and is now a grandfather after he and Letourneau’s daughter Georgia gave birth to a baby boy.
He told The Hollywood Reporter he wasn’t thrilled with the new film, admitting he was “offended”.
“My story is not as simple as this movie,” he said.
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