Man who wed his rapist speaks out in US

A man who was 12 when he had sex with his teacher, impregnated her, and later wedded the woman after she served a prison term for statutory rape, has opened up about their marriage in an interview.

Mary Kay Letourneau was 34 and a married mother of four at the time of the scandal in 1997, which triggered a storm of media coverage including books and a made-for-TV movie.

Her student, Vili Fualaau, is now 31, and she is 53.

Letourneau was initially sent to prison for six months in late 1997 for child rape and was parolled the following January, but was barred by a court order from having any contact with Fualaau.

Within weeks, they had been caught together, and she was sent back to prison to serve a seven-year sentence for violating probation.

A year after she was released in 2004, they wed. By then, her ex-pupil was 21.

“I don’t think there’s ever a full 10 good years of marriage,” Fualaau told ABC’s Barbara Walters in which the couple also discussed raising their two now-teenage daughters.

“You have your ups and downs in marriages. But, you know, what matters is how you pull through all the bad times.”

Letourneau was briefly jailed in January last year after missing a court appearance for driving without a licence, law enforcement officials said.

Fualaau told Walters being a young father was difficult. One of the couple’s daughters was born while Letourneau was behind bars, ABC reported.

“I don’t feel like I had the right support or the right help behind me,” he said.

“From my family, from anyone in general. I mean, my friends couldn’t help me because they had no idea what, what it was like to be a parent, I mean, because we were all 14, 15.”

Today Letourneau is a grandmother, but remains a registered sex offender.

While Fualaau said he remained faithful to Letourneau in his “heart and mind” while she was in prison, the former teacher says he was not. “He wasn’t faithful,” she said. “I said he did his thing, I was gone!”

The couple said they never directly told their daughters about the scandal surrounding their relationship, but they eventually found out about it through Google.

READ MORE: Quirky World ... Cameron ‘serenaded’ by ukulele-playing heckler