The former teacher was jailed for her relationship with her then-sixth grade student, Vili Fualaau.
Mary Kay Letourneau has returned to the public eye via a documentary in which she defends her infamous relationship with a student.
"Mary Kay Letourneau: Autobiography" premiered Tuesday on A&E's Biography network, which sold the two-hour special as Letourneau's "most in-depth confessional" ever.
"Am I sorry he's the father of my children and the man of my life?" Letourneau says in the special, referring to the now 34-year-old Vili Fualaau. "No, I'm not."
Letourneau defends the relationship, in part by saying Fualaau was no longer her student, that he was old for the grade he was in, and by insisting — as she has many times — that Fualaau was the aggressor.
Now 56, Letourneau gets emotional in the special as she recalls her life in the spotlight.
"Everybody wants to hear the story," she said. "Whether it's because they want to analyze it or criticize it. It's been 20 years but it's still there."
Letourneau began an affair with Fualaau in 1997, when she was a sixth-grade teacher in Seattle.
When she became pregnant with their first daughter Audrey, he was just 14 years old. She served seven years behind bars for child rape.
Letourneau was released after six months with orders that she not have contact with Fualaau. When the two were caught having sex in a car, Letourneau was imprisoned again. This time, she was pregnant with their second child.
In 1999, Inside Edition was there when he saw his second daughter, Georgia, who was born behind bars, for the first time.
In 2005, a year after she served seven years in prison, Letourneau and Fualaau were married.
The couple was more recently in the news just last year after Fualaau filed for a legal separation from Letourneau.
Fualaau also appears in the documentary, which the show's executive producer, Brad Abramson, said was shot before rumors of the separation.
Like Letourneau, Fualaau defends their relationship in the show. "The age difference, all of that stuff, wasn't going through my mind," he said of their notorious 1996 courtship.
Letourneau, who now works as a paralegal, uses her camera time to talk about her future and what it may hold for her and her family.
While the status of her marriage remains unclear, producers hope the special will allow viewers to see Letourneau's bizarre and complex story "with a new understanding."
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