Mary Kay Letourneau has died

[PaulaSB12]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8500619/Mary-Kay-Letourneau-died-age-58.html
a lot of rips for her and she made mistakes in comments for a woman who sexually abused and got pregnant by a 6th grader. Seemingly they had divorced last year a bit too old for her when he hit his 30's. I believe she tried to get back into teaching maybe she wanted a third husband.

 

[littlejimmy]

just another pedophile.

 

[fly girl]

Am I supposed to care? (OP, please know this is not directed at you. You are just sharing.)

She was a rapist. She preyed upon a 12 year old child. And for the life of me I’ll never understand the double standard of why women are treated differently when they are sexual predators. If reversed and this was a male teacher and a 12 year old girl, no way would the first sentence be only 3 months.

No RIP from me. She was vile. Showed zero remorse. (However I do sympathize for her children as they are innocent.)

 

[Pea-n-Me]

I've followed this story since the beginning. Shocking that a teacher would take the innocence and life of a 12yr old disadvantaged boy. She was a predator, and deserved her jail time. I feel sorry for those she left behind. They have to live with this legacy.

Does anyone know if she was ever formaly diagnosed with a psychiatric illness? N/m answered my own question: Bipolar, according to her attorney.

ETA The disorder caused Letourneau to take “really stupid risks,” like violating probation to spend a night at the movies and shopping with the boy she is convicted of raping, her attorney, David Gehrke, said.

The disorder is the root of Letourneau’s attraction for the boy, her willingness to bear his child, and her insistence that she loves him, said the psychiatrist who evaluated Letourneau for her sentencing.

“It’s like she has a happy button and a love button and a hypersexual button in her brain and it’s being pressed,” Dr. Julie Moore said. “When it’s pressed, there is little room for self-reflection. That’s why Mary is such an inept criminal.”

 

[RangerPooh]

Sorry but don't care. What she did was disgusting. She was a pedophile. She threw away her marriage, family, and career to have sex and be with a 12-year-old boy. How sick is that?!

 

[starvenger]

Two separate things here:
- she was a sexual predator, so no sympathy from me.
- cancer sucks.

That is all.

 

[Searc]

I have sympathy for her children, though I'm unaware if they had a relationship with her after she chose a child to have sex with over her own children.

 

[wenrob]

I would never wish anyone dead but I certainly don’t feel her passing is any kind of loss to this world.

This case has always infuriated me. It doesn’t help that there is/was a culture out there that it’s almost a right of passage for a teenage boy to be seduced by a much older woman. Like it’s not “as bad” as a male taking advantage of a young girl. She got off with a slap on the wrist and then continued to do it! I think of my son at 12, just a baby really and get so angry that she and many more women like her suffer little to no consequences.

 

[fly girl]

I have sympathy for her children, though I'm unaware if they had a relationship with her after she chose a child to have sex with over her own children.

I don't know if her 4 children from her first marriage were still in contact. But she had 2 daughters with the boy, the first one was when he was only 15 years old.

 

[Brett Wyman]

I don't know if her 4 children from her first marriage were still in contact. But she had 2 daughters with the boy, the first one was when he was only 15 years old.

Yikes.

 

[fly girl]

Yikes.

I know! My heart goes to the kids.

 

[Searc]

I don't know if her 4 children from her first marriage were still in contact. But she had 2 daughters with the boy, the first one was when he was only 15 years old.

Sorry, I should have clarified. I meant her four children with her first husband.

 

[kaytieeldr]

She got off with a slap on the wrist and then continued to do it!

And spent over seven years in prison for that.

 

[wenrob]

And spent over seven years in prison for that.

Not enough. My male high school gym teacher got 25 to life. Had she done more than three months in the beginning maybe this kid might have had a chance to somewhat normalize his life.

 

[wenrob]

I take that back, he got life. This was in 1996, ten years after I graduated. We told our parents about him repeatedly. They and the school did nothing. Two of his ex-wives were former students. What’s worse is our other coach married a student while still a minor after years of similar behavior. As far as I know he never paid the piper in any way. The laws needs to be swift and harsh and apply to both genders. “Sleeping with” a 12 year old is flat out rape. Three months and then seven years for repeating doesn’t even cover it.
https://lasvegassun.com/news/1996/aug/28/former-high-school-teacher-sentenced-to-life-in-pr/

 

[VandVsmama]

I feel sorry for her kids. I think that she was crazy. Insane. I'm sorry for the pain & suffering that she must have gone through in the latter stages of her cancer, but a part of me also has a little schadenfreude towards her over that.

 

[QueenIsabella]

I take that back, he got life. This was in 1996, ten years after I graduated. We told our parents about him repeatedly. They and the school did nothing. Two of his ex-wives were former students. What’s worse is our other coach married a student while still a minor after years of similar behavior. As far as I know he never paid the piper in any way. The laws needs to be swift and harsh and apply to both genders. “Sleeping with” a 12 year old is flat out rape. Three months and then seven years for repeating doesn’t even cover it.
https://lasvegassun.com/news/1996/aug/28/former-high-school-teacher-sentenced-to-life-in-pr/

OT, but we're going through this right now. The band teacher at our former middle school is awaiting trial for molesting female students. The super outrageous part of it is, people have been complaining and reporting him for 20 YEARS!!!! There are notes in his file, he was sent to counseling (in 1998!), his victims and their families have been begging for something to be done--nothing. Luckily, I have orchestra kids, but I'm so outraged that nobody took the complaints seriously. Or, seriously enough to actually REMOVE HIM FROM THE SCHOOL. I don't think the schol board has a snowball's chance of keeping their jobs--people are just so mad and frustrated.

 

[wenrob]

OT, but we're going through this right now. The band teacher at our former middle school is awaiting trial for molesting female students. The super outrageous part of it is, people have been complaining and reporting him for 20 YEARS!!!! There are notes in his file, he was sent to counseling (in 1998!), his victims and their families have been begging for something to be done--nothing. Luckily, I have orchestra kids, but I'm so outraged that nobody took the complaints seriously. Or, seriously enough to actually REMOVE HIM FROM THE SCHOOL. I don't think the schol board has a snowball's chance of keeping their jobs--people are just so mad and frustrated.

It’s insane isn’t it? This man had been doing this for a decade when I got there and continued to do it for ten more years. The school even says “Well, we heard rumors but we didn’t think there was anything to it.” They were told. Repeatedly!

As long as we’re slightly OT, this happens with as much frequency with same sex offenders as well. When I was in Jr. High (6th-9th) I stopped dressing out for PE in 8th grade and refused to all through high school. Everyone gave me crap about it. They thought I was just lazy. As an adult I became somewhat of a gym rat and they teased me about it “the kid who couldn’t pass PE now goes to the gym!” Finally somewhere in my mid forties I finally said to my *dad, “Do you know WHY I quit dressing out? The (female) PE teacher would make us open our towels to prove we didn’t have clothes on underneath and then would watch us shower.” To say he was beyond appalled is an understatement. He kept saying, “Why didn’t you tell me?” Well, because I was 13 years old and no one ever explained that kind of thing was wrong. It never occurred to me to say how humiliating and uncomfortable it was even when I was constantly berated for it. They never thought to ask why I wasn’t dressing out. The lesson here is keep talking to your kids and make sure they know they can come to you. If something doesn’t feel right you need to find out why. I was a straight A student that was suddenly, inexplicably failing PE. My parents, bless them, weren’t paying enough attention.

*It was my mom/stepdad who did not listen about the coach. I feel confident my dad probably would have killed him even though the never laid a hand on me specifically.

 

[Pea-n-Me]

I don't know if her 4 children from her first marriage were still in contact. But she had 2 daughters with the boy, the first one was when he was only 15 years old.

I saw somewhere that the younger two daughters were friends on FB with the older kids. Not sure what that means other than there was some contact among them.

 

[superme80]

Oh darn. No sympathy here at all!