Before former teacher and convicted child rapistMary Kay Letourneaubecame infamous for sexually assaulting her 12-year-old student and eventually marrying him, her family made headlines for a different scandal: Her father’s double life.
John G. Schmitz was a Republican politician who was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives after serving in the California State Senate. He had been a member of the John Birch Society — a fringe, right-wing political advocacy group, but he was kicked out of the group because of his extremist rhetoric and offensive statements about marginalized groups.
In July 1982, it was revealed that the ultraconservative politician, who was also also a political science professor at Santa Ana College, was caught in an affair with former student Carla Stuckle, with whom he fathered two children.
A new ID special examines Letourneau’s sordid life and crimes — and delves into the impact her father’s public humiliation had on her. The special, titled,Mary Kay Letourneau: Notes on A Scandal,premieres on August 28 at 9 p.m. ET on ID, and begins streaming discovery+ that day. (An exclusive clip is shown below.)
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Mary Kay Letourneau and John G. Schmitz.ALAN BERNER/AP/Shutterstock; Charles Gorry/AP/Shutterstock
The affair began around 1973 when Schmitz was Stuckle’s professor at Santa Ana College. The affair was revealed almost a decade later after Stuckle took the son whom Schmitz had fathered to the hospital for an injury. Stuckle was later charged with child abuse — and had to name who the father was. While Schmitz admitted to being the father of the boy and another child with Stuckle, he never helped raise them and never paid child support.
After the news broke, Schmitz’s political career — which he built on his reputation as a family man — could not survive. In 2001, Schmitz died from cancer at age 70.
“I noticed a very, very palpable change in her after the story about her dad broke,” Michelle Lobdell, Letourneau’s childhood best friend, says in the documentary. “The whole facade of the family fell apart and it was like Mary Kay did a 180.”
In 1996, Letourneau began sexually abusing her 12-year-old student, Vili Fualaau, when she was his sixth-grade teacher. The sexual abuse was revealed in February 1997 when her then-husband, Steve Letourneau, found love letters between his wife and Fualaau.
Letourneau was eventually arrested and sentenced to six months in prison, then released on the condition she would not contact Fualaau. She quickly broke the condition of her release, which landed her in prison for seven years and put her on the sex offenders registry for the rest of her life.
In 2020, Letourneaudied from cancerat the age of 58.
“She ended up imitating her father,” Lobdell says in the documentary. “She repeated what he did, but on a much more … ugly scale.”
Mary Kay Letourneau: Notes on A Scandal, premieres on August 28 at 9 p.m. ET on ID, and begins streaming discovery+ that day.
If you or someone you know has been a victim of sexual abuse, text “STRENGTH” to the Crisis Text Line at 741-741 to be connected to a certified crisis counselor.
source: people.com
