Former US schoolteacher Mary Kay Letourneau has married the ex-pupil she was jailed for raping when he was just 12 years old, in a ceremony shrouded in secrecy, according to US media reports.
Letourneau, 43, and 22-year-old Vili Fualaau were married late on Friday at a winery near Seattle, where the two have been living together since she was released from prison last August.
Details of their reunion were closely guarded -- except for a series of interviews by US celebrity TV tabloid show Entertainment Tonight and its sister show, The Insider. They had exclusive rights to the nuptials, but officials said they did not pay for it.
PHOTO: AP
Letourneau and Fualaau exchanged vows they had written themselves, shortly after 10pm, Janet Annino, a producer on Entertainment Tonight, told Seattle's KOMO TV.
The ceremony was at the Columbia Winery in Woodinville, some 30km northeast of Seattle, according to Annino.
"Mary Kay was whisked out of the hotel to this venue under intense security," she said. "She arrived here with a sheet over her head. She had to lie down in the car coming in to avoid the paparazzi."
The couple's two daughters, Audrey, 8, and Alexis Georgia, 7, were flower girls. Letourneau chose her teenage daughter, Mary Claire, from her earlier marriage, to be her maid of honor.
Letourneau was an elementary- school teacher and married mother of four when she met Fualaau, of Samoan parents, then in second grade. Their relationship became sexual when he was 12 and she was a 34-year-old, unhappily-married mother of four.
Letourneau was arrested in 1997 after her husband found some love letters from the boy. She was pregnant with Fualaau's first child.
In May 1997, Letourneau gave birth to a daughter, three months before she pleaded guilty and was sentenced to seven-and-a-half years in prison.
After six months, she was released on parole on condition that she receive treatment and not see her underage lover. But in February 1998, police caught the couple having sex in a van and Letourneau was sent back to serve out her entire sentence. She gave birth in prison to Fualaau's second daughter in October 1998.
NO WORK, CLASS: President William Lai urged people in the eastern, southern and northern parts of the country to be on alert, with Typhoon Kong-rey approaching Typhoon Kong-rey is expected to make landfall on Taiwan’s east coast today, with work and classes canceled nationwide. Packing gusts of nearly 300kph, the storm yesterday intensified into a typhoon and was expected to gain even more strength before hitting Taitung County, the US Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center said. The storm is forecast to cross Taiwan’s south, enter the Taiwan Strait and head toward China, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The CWA labeled the storm a “strong typhoon,” the most powerful on its scale. Up to 1.2m of rainfall was expected in mountainous areas of eastern Taiwan and destructive winds are likely
KONG-REY: A woman was killed in a vehicle hit by a tree, while 205 people were injured as the storm moved across the nation and entered the Taiwan Strait Typhoon Kong-rey slammed into Taiwan yesterday as one of the biggest storms to hit the nation in decades, whipping up 10m waves, triggering floods and claiming at least one life. Kong-rey made landfall in Taitung County’s Chenggong Township (成功) at 1:40pm, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The typhoon — the first in Taiwan’s history to make landfall after mid-October — was moving north-northwest at 21kph when it hit land, CWA data showed. The fast-moving storm was packing maximum sustained winds of 184kph, with gusts of up to 227kph, CWA data showed. It was the same strength as Typhoon Gaemi, which was the most
Air and rail traffic around Taiwan were disrupted today while power cuts occurred across the country as Typhoon Kong-rey, predicted to make landfall in eastern Taiwan this afternoon, continued edging closer to the country. A total of 241 passenger and cargo flights departing from or arriving at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport were canceled today due to the typhoon, Taoyuan International Airport Corp said. As of 9:30am, 109 inbound flights, 103 outbound flights and 29 cargo flights had been canceled, the company said. Taiwan Railway Corp also canceled all express trains on its Western Trunk Line, Eastern Trunk Line, South-Link Line and attached branches
Typhoon Kong-rey is forecast to make landfall in eastern Taiwan this afternoon and would move out to sea sometime overnight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 9am today, Kong-rey's outer rim was covering most of Taiwan except for the north. The storm's center was 110km east of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan's southernmost tip, and moving northwest at 28kph. It was carrying maximum sustained winds near its center of 184kph, and gusts of up to 227kph, the CWA said. At a news conference this morning, CWA forecaster Chu Mei-lin (朱美霖) said Kong-rey is moving "extremely fast," and is expected to make landfall between
RSS