Letourneau, Fualaau celebrate 10 years of marriage

The man who married his former sixth-grade teacher after she was imprisoned for raping him said their relationship hasn’t always been good, but they’ve persevered.

“I wish I would have had a little bit better guidance through everything,” said Vili Fualaau, who’s now 31 years old and the father of two teenage girls. “It was really confusing to me. ‘We’re going to label this kid as a victim and we’re going to make this woman an example for all other teachers who take the same path.'”

Photos from Letourneau and Fualaau’s past

His wife, 53-year-old Mary Kay Letourneau, is a former suburban Seattle teacher who became tabloid fodder in the 1990s when she was convicted of raping the then-12-year-old Fualaau.

She served a prison sentence and then married him 10 years ago this April.

Letourneau was in prison for much of her daughters’ early childhood. Fualaau said it wasn’t easy, as a 14-year-old, to raise Audrey and Georgia, now 17 and 16 years old.

“It was a huge change in my life, for sure. I don’t feel like I had the right support or you know, the right help behind me,” he said.

It would definitely be a shock, Fualaau said, if one of his daughters was having an affair with a teacher.

“I think it would be the same reaction that any parent would have if their child was like ‘I’m in love with my teacher,'” he said.

Letourneau told Walters she’s still sore about media coverage.

“I don’t know if enough time will ever pass where it will take away what the media did to our story,” she said.

Fualaau and Letourneau discussed their lives together with Barbara Walters in an interview that aired Friday night.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.