Man who wed teacher after Seattle sex scandal speaks in interview

SEATTLE (Reuters) - A man who was 12 when he had sex with his Seattle-area teacher, impregnated her and later wedded the woman after she served several years in prison, has opened up about their marriage and family in an interview with ABC News. 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 and was paroled the following January, but was barred by a court order from having any contact with Fualaau. Within weeks they had been caught together in her car, 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 former pupil was 21. "I don't think there's ever a full 10 good years of marriage," Fualaau told ABC's Barbara Walters in an interview set to air on Friday in which the couple also discusses 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," he said. Letourneau was briefly jailed in King County in January last year after missing a court appearance for driving without a license, 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." (Reporting by Eric M. Johnson; Editing by Daniel Wallis and Sandra Maler)