What happens to a woman when she finds the man of her dreams, only he is a child? And if the woman is his teacher? American parents cringed at the story of Mary Kay Letourneau, who first met Vili Fualaau when she was his teacher in second grade. He did not start flirting with her until he was in sixth. She started to have sex with him the next year, when he was 13. Already the mother of four from a marriage that was disintegrating, she would bear the teenager’s daughter, but not before she ended up in prison on rape and molestation charges. She would then violate the rules for the suspension of her sentence by seeing him again -and becoming pregnant again. Letourneau’s beauty and struggles with manic depression made her illicit affair the fodder of tabloids and women’s magazine around the world. But there was something touching, if maddening, abut her refusal to renounce her love for the boy at the cost of her freedom. In 1998, after giving birth to her second child, she began serving a seven-year prison sentence. Released on parole in August 2004, she quickly married her young lover, who by then had turned 21. (Howard Chua-Eoan, “Mary Kay Letourneau’s Forbidden Love, 1978,” Time.com, 2007.)

Surprisingly, this account of her story is honest and accurate, neutral and objective, comparatively, in contrast to most of the media coverage, characterized and vitiated by falsehoods, intentional and unintentional, lies and canards, distortions and misinformation, rampant hysteria and tabloid sensationalism: the demonization of Mary as a “rapist” and “pedophile” and “child molester,” a description that was/is false, objectively and scientifically, and malicious and slanderous. And the depiction, equally false, of Vili as a “victim” of “rape” and “child molestation,” tantamount or comparable to a prepubertal girl of 11 or 12 who is too young and immature to consent to or initiate sex and who is a true victim of a perverse and predatory male, an adult or underage adolescent, who rapes and molests her. The MSM as a whole was less a source of factual and objective news than an agent and myrmidon of CSA victimology propaganda and inculcation.

This journalist doesn’t refer to Mary as a “rapist” and “pedophile” and “child molester.” Or Vili as a “victim.” He notes that he was 13, not 12, when they first had sex and that he started to flirt with her in sixth grade, conceding that he was the initiator of their sexual union but not exposing the nature and degree of his aggressions. It notes that her marriage was “disintegrating,” which implies that she didn’t destroy her marriage and betray her husband and desert her children by falling in love and having sex with Vili and twice becoming pregnant, but doesn’t mention that her marriage was “disintegrating,” primarily, because of her husband’s serial adulteries and philandering. She was finally going to divorce him after years of betrayal and infidelity, apparently, and perhaps he wanted to divorce her because he fell in love with and wanted to marry or live with another woman? And in describing her love for Vili as “touching” and her “struggles with manic depression,” he’s commiserative, mildly, rather than censorious.

It’s true that he was “only” 13, not 12, when they first had sex. But it’s also true that he was pubescent at age 10, “sexually-active” at age 12, for sure, and possibly even 11, and probably had more sexual partners, perhaps far more, at age 13 than did Mary at age 33. Raised as a Catholic, strictly and devoutly, it’s possible that the only man Mary had sex with before Vili was her husband. And Vili was the aggressor in their sexual union, forcing himself on her the first time they had intercourse. In response to my comments, she confirmed in one of the many letters we exchanged that the first time they had intercourse was “against my will.”

So, given such facts, his level of maturity was closer to that of a typical 16- or 17-old as opposed to a typical 13-year-old. In regard to maturity, the age of puberty, intelligence, sexual experience, etc, the nature of 13-year-old varies significantly. Millions of 13- and 14-year-olds, especially if pubescent at age 10 or 11 or 12, are more or far more intelligent, mature, “sexually-active,” sexually-experienced, etc., than millions of 16- and17-year-olds.

(For the record, which is pertinent, I was an atheist at age 10, when I was still a child, biologically, agnostic at 8 and 9 as I vaguely remember, and pubescent at age 11, which reveals a level of maturity far beyond my numerical age. And Vili was pubescent at age 10.)

The obligatory lie or canard that began in 1997 and continues to this day, over 20-years later, is that Mary “seduced” and “raped” the “child” and “little boy” when he was only 12-years-old. The commenters and reporters who say and write this are either lying or misinformed. Are they ignorant of the facts or are they lying to make her “crimes” appear more “heinous” and “shocking” and to give the absurd depiction and vilification of Mary as a “rapist” and “pedophile” and “child molester” a spurious credibility and gravitas. Unlike Vili and many others, most 12-year-olds are prepubescent. Prepubertal 12-year-olds are children, biologically, whereas most 13-year-olds are pubescent, and also teenagers.