TITLE: Mary Kay LeTourneau fights for America's future

From: Tony Hollick (anduril@cix.compulink.co.uk)
Date: Sun Jul 27 1997 - 23:50:36 MDT


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Copyright 1997 The Seattle Times Company

Friday, July 25, 1997

mailto:rfit-new@seatimes.com
Ronald K. Fitten
Seattle Times staff reporter

     Mary Kay LeTourneau had gotten herself into deep trouble, and she
     knew the trouble was about to get deeper.

     Thirty-four years old, a mother of four young children and a highly
     regarded grade-school teacher, she had just learned she was pregnant.
     The child was not her husband's.

     Worse, much worse, the father was a child himself - a 13-year-old boy
     she'd mentored since second grade and had taught just a few months
     earlier, in her sixth-grade class at Shorewood Elementary School in
     Burien.

     LeTourneau knew she wouldn't have an abortion. She also knew that the
     baby's racial mix meant that the public would eventually learn the
     truth about what she had done. She sat in her classroom one day and
     listed the possible consequences, for her and others.

     Those consequences have been enormous, worse than she ever thought
     possible. Her four children have lost their mother, at least
     temporarily. The boy, who turned 14 one month after his daughter was
     born in May, is in counseling. Her students have been traumatized.
     She and her husband are getting a divorce; he's moved out of state.

      LeTourneau will never teach again. Her house is for sale.

     She is charged with child rape. On Aug. 7, she'll plead guilty. Three
     weeks later she'll find out whether she'll go to jail briefly and
     receive treatment, or go to prison.
     LeTourneau has said she is deeply ashamed of herself for having had
     sex with the boy, and for violating the sacred trust of her family,
     her profession and her society.

     "I think what I've done is horrible and I wouldn't want anyone to
     think I believe it's acceptable," she said. "It's not."

     But the story doesn't end there. Though LeTourneau has been ordered
     to have no contact with the boy, she continues to hold romantic
     feelings for him. Those strong feelings, she said, as well as those
     for the unborn baby, played a role in her decision to go through with
     the pregnancy. And the bo's mother, who describes her son as
     physically and emotionally old beyond his years - "he's never been a
     typical 13-year-old" - said that he loves LeTourneau back.

      Prosecutors and some experts on sexual offenders don't see it that
      way. They see a woman in denial and a boy who may have been
      emotionally scarred.

      Women who have sex with boys "are more likely to present their
      crimes as a love affair and much more likely to hold on to that
      belief," said Florence Wolfe, co-director of Seattle-based Northwest
      Treatment Associates, which counsels sex offenders. "But it's still
      exploitation.

     "Lots of 13-year-old kids are physically mature, very intelligent. But this business of a 35-year-old woman making a love commitment with a 13-year-old boy is hard to fathom. What 13-year-old ha-
s the capacity for that kind of love?"

_Joy in work, but not in marriage_

      Mary Katherine LeTourneau was born one of six children in a strict
      Catholic family in California. She was popular - smart, pretty, and
      charming.

     At Arizona State University, she met and began dating Steve
     LeTourneau. When she became pregnant, they married. But it was a
     union doomed to fail, she now says.

     "I love him now as much as I did when I first got married. But how
     much love? Not enough to hold a marriage."

     But even during the most tumultuous periods of the marriage,
     LeTourneau found joy as a teacher.

    "I walked in my classroom every Monday and knew I was in the right
    place," she said.

     There was always a waiting list of students for her class, teachers
     at Shorewood say. And parents raved to one another about her ability
     to reach their children.

      "The teachers and principals all gave her high marks," said Shirley
      Hodgson, director of human resources for the Highline School
      District. "They all thought - and still think - she is a good
      teacher, a good person."

     LeTourneau said it didn't take her long a few years ago to notice the
     little boy in her second-grade class with extraordinary artistic
     ability. Something else set him apart, she contended.
     "There was a respect, an insight, a spirit, an understanding between
     us that grew over time," she said. "There was a bonding that was
     pretty instantaneous. It was the kind of feeling you have with a
     brother or sister - a feeling that they're part of your life forever.

     "But I didn't know what it meant. I felt that one day he might marry
     my daughter."

      LeTourneau said she introduced the boy to the piano and bought him
      art supplies. He sketched and drew for her. As he went from second
      to third, fourth and fifth grades, she was no longer his teacher,
      but, she said, the bond between them grew stronger. By sixth grade,
      he was in her class again.

     By then, she said: "He was my best friend. We just walked together in
     the same rhythm."

     All the while, the boy was maturing. His family had always considered
     him old beyond his years - his mother said she's often called him "an
     old soul trapped in a young body."

     By then, LeTourneau's stormy marriage was at its ebb.

     One day last summer, to show her his affection, the boy surprised her
     with a silver ring. He later told police that when he placed it on
     her finger, then reached to take it back, they looked intently at
     each other. For him, it was a turning point.

      It wasn't long after that day that the two first had sex.
      Prosecutors say that continued until February.

     Not long after the sex started, Steve LeTourneau found letters his
     wife had written to the boy. He went to the boy's home and asked him
     straight out if he was involved sexually with his wife. The boy
     admitted that, yes, he was.

     For a while, Steve LeTourneau kept his knowledge of his wife's
     actions, and, later, her pregnancy, to himself. Then he told
     relatives. One of them told Child Protective Services and Highline
     School District officials.

'That's not love,' says counselor

     To prosecutors and some sexual-deviancy experts, the facts of the
     case speak for themselves: Mary LeTourneau stole the boy's childhood.

      As a consequence, they say she should be imprisoned or, at the
      least, required to take part in a rigorous sexual-offender program.

     "I have no sympathy for her," said Wolfe of Northwest Treatment
     Associates. "When we hear it here - the proclamation of love - it is
     a rationalization. Did she care about his welfare, about what could
     happen to him by becoming a father at 13?

     "I don't see where she's acted in (the boy's) best interest. That's
     not love - that's a big emotional party."

      Lucy Berliner, research director of the Harborview Center for sexual
      assault, expressed similar views.

     "The idea that an attractive adult woman would find him very
     interesting as a partner would be very flattering," Berliner said.
     "But what's hard to understand is why a teacher, or parent, or any
     adult would act with such complete disregard considering the impact
     their actions might have on the child.

   "Even if she does genuinely have feelings for him, there is no context
   for a relationship like this to be normalized."

    Further, she said, "No one can know with 100 percent certainty how the
    boy will be affected."

'I assumed I could trust her'

     Not surprisingly, the boy's mother was devastated by the news. She
     said she'd questioned her son because he and LeTourneau were spending
     so much time together.

     "But he said there was nothing between them. So when I found out
     there was, I was hurt - hurt because of the trust that was broken.
     Mary is a mother and I am a mother. And I assumed I could trust her
     with my son."

     She says she has since forgiven LeTourneau. She wants her son to know
     the baby, whom he intends to one day help raise, and she loves the
     baby herself.

     "I don't condone what happened and have never condoned what
      happened," she said. "But it did happen, and it's something I have
      to accept and live with."

      For LeTourneau, it remains difficult to face the boy's mother.

    "I always want to say to her that I'm sorry."

      The boy's family has tried to protect his privacy. He now spends
      some of his time in Seattle at his family's home, and some with
      friends in another town - in virtual seclusion.

     "He's doing fine as long he's away from the situation and people
     don't harass him," said his mother.

      LeTourneau said she is haunted by what might happen to him. She said
      she understands that his life will never be the same. "But I know he
      has a strong spirit and I'm hoping it will carry him through."

     The effects of LeTourneau's actions have also been felt at her former
     school.

      A parent whose child was in LeTourneau's class said her daughter was
      crushed by the teacher's sudden departure.

       "We brought in a substitute and she did everything she could to help our children learn, but she just wasn't able to teach them," the parent said. "And we told her it wasn't her fault. They co-
uld have brought in Princess Diana and she would not have been able to teach those children."

_Prison or treatment await_

      LeTourneau has told a judge she will plead guilty to child rape at a
      hearing Aug. 7.

      The judge may send her to prison for up to seven years or - she
      hopes - allow her to enroll in an extensive treatment program for
      sex offenders.

     A psychosexual evaluation done for the court states that LeTourneau
     "is not criminally oriented, chemically dependent nor sexually
     obsessed and compelled." The evaluator also noted, though, that
     LeTourneau "has not resolved her romantic, erotic and sexual
     feelings" for the boy, but "has the itellectual resources to engage
     in and successfully complete psychotherapy."

     The evaluator concluded: "In my opinion, Ms. LeTourneau does not pose
     significant risk of a sexual re-offense with the victim or other
     young males."

     LeTourneau's friends and supporters also believe that treatment, not
     prison, is the answer.

      One parent said she was deeply disappointed when she learned about
      what had happened. But "the way she loves people, the way she cares
      about people and treats people, I have to say I don't believe she
      should be sent to Purdy."

     At least for now, the state is allowing LeTourneau to keep the baby.

     At a dependency hearing earlier this week, a judge said she could
     continue to raise the child with the help of friends and relatives -
     namely, the boy's mother. If LeTourneau is sent to prison, the boy's
     mother hopes to care for the baby until she returns.

     LeTourneau says it's the court-ordered loss of her four older
     children - two boys and two girls ages 3 to 12 - that has been the
     hardest to bear. For now, they are staying with relatives on the East
     Coast; she may see them only under supervised conditions.

     Even when she was weighing the consequences of going through with the
     pregnancy, she said, she never imagined that her older children might
     become motherless because of what she'd done. She thought she and her
     husband would split up and she and the older children would bring the
     baby into their fold.

     "I understand that I put my children in a fragile position," she
     said. "But I never expected that I . . . would be in a position that
     I couldn't protect them. I always thought that together, we could get
     through this."

     She said she is aware the baby one day will have questions about the
     relationship between her mother and father. So she is writing a
     journal to give the girl when she's older.

     "But this is for the future," she said. "My concern now is the next
     six months. I don't know where I'm going to be, where her father is
     going to be."

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