Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/07/08/child-rapist-mary-kay-letourne.html
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I find this story interesting in retrospect. My conservative father said at the time, “Well, if it’s love, then you just need to wait”.
I’m about the age now my father was then when he said that (near enough anyways). It takes some magical view of love, romance and how the world works to hold that view as a middle aged man. It’s weird.
Even the kid came around in his thinking about events:
The couple finalized a legal separation in August 2019.[5][66][67][68] Earlier in the marriage, Vili Fualaau said he was not a victim, and was unashamed of the relationship,[69] but came to see it as unhealthy by the time the couple filed for a legal separation.[70]
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Men who rape children are considered predators. Women who rape male children are just considered sluts. Because an awful lot of people think the woman couldn’t have enough power in a relationship to coerce a male child. Somehow, depsite being an adult, she isn’t considered more powerful than a male child. Add in that fallacy about it being normal for boys to be able to give consent for sex, when girls the same age are considered too innocent.
Women who rape girls are also considered predators. Because, girls cannot make their own decisions or are too “innocent.”
Thank you Rob for calling what she did by it’s proper label. She raped a child. Repeatedly.
As an aside, I remember an episode of True Blood where Jason Stackhouse realizes his teacher raped him. That all the bullshit he’d been told about how he wanted to have sex with his adult teacher as a child and that made what she did ok was bullshit. He realized she had hurt him, badly, and he was still experiencing the effects of her abuse as an adult.
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I hope he and his children got a whole lot of therapy. It must be really hard for the kids too.
I should not have read the wikipedia entry. The things the rapist is quoted as saying. I feel ill. She said she didn’t know having sex with a 12 year old was against the law. Fuck that noise. She was a teacher, even back in the day school employees were mandatory reporters for sexual abuse.
I’m going to Unicorn chasers now.
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I have a 12 year old son. There is no way imaginable he could ever consent to sex or a relationship. Any individual looking at a 12 year old and saying “but we are in love” is a predator. end of story.
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The media are following the patriarchy’s conventions on the topic. Here’s Fark Dot Com’s summary chart:
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Yeah, this is exactly it. The still male-dominated media views this as a fantasy - illegal of course, but definitely hawt. The coverage of it is male violence at play.
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Indeed. Even if Letourneau had not repeatedly raped a child, it would still be child grooming, which is abuse.
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Don’t neglect the racial angle. Juvenile POCs are routinely seen as “more sexually mature” compared to white kids the same age. If the older, female teacher had been Samoan and the younger, male student been white, she would have gotten zero sympathy.
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Yup… either find a new word for grooming children into having sex with adults or call it rape. This strangeness of trying to play it different ways for different folks is fucked up.
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I feel like the left side is reversed. It’s still not super rare for just graduated HS girls to marry (relatively young) male HS teachers with no repercussions when it’s obvious that they were in a relationship before she graduated.
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Well, here’s a nugget I didn’t know: her father was a one-term Congressman from California who was thrown out of the John Birch Society for extremist rhetoric. I mean, I’m sort of impressed, really.
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In France this is a path to the Presidency.
Thanks for posting this, I remember Schmitz from that time.
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I tutor high school students. Every now and again I get offered a primary student. My youngest student right now is 12. He is a kid. There is no way he has the understanding or maturity to consent to sex, let alone someone in such a profound position of power over him.
Someone that would betray that trust parents have her and abuse that power deserves a lot more than 7 years in jail.
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I’m not really clear on how “died fairly suddenly” jibes with “24-hour care for the last month of her life”
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She was alive one minute, dead the next. So sudden! /s
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From what I see most people have very little understanding of how the world works. And despite pop culture being obsessed with love and romance for decades, if not centuries, most people have surprisingly little clue about how to achieve and maintain positive, happy and lasting relationships.
to;dr: what people say about love can safely be disregarded.
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Without having bothered to read the article to find out what she needed care for (because, hey, this is the internet and who has time for that - omg - kittens, squee!), it seems perfectly possible to be in need of 24 hour care but not be in a state where one is expected to pop one’s clogs imminently.
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The NYT ran a story with an accurate headline:
Mary Kay Letourneau, Teacher Who Raped Student and Then Married Him, Dies at 58
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He’s also a sexual predator that had sex with his students.
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