Once student and teacher, now they're newlyweds
 |
|
||||||||||
Former schoolteacher Mark Blilie gave up everything for the girl he loves.
He lost his family, his home, his teaching job and his reputation. He went to prison for almost four years.
Was it worth it?
"Absolutely," said Mark Blilie, holding the hand of Toni Blilie in a Fremont restaurant.
"Oh, yes, absolutely," she added.
They act like newlyweds.
They are.
Mark Blilie, 46, and Toni Pala, 20, were married Jan. 5 in Las Vegas by a justice of the peace. The bride wore a sweater and slacks. There was one witness, a friend of hers. Then the Blilies drove a moving van back to Seattle. Mark Blilie is working for a medical lab. She works in a Fremont clothing store.
Mark Blilie was married when he met Toni Pala, a student in his class at Kirkland Junior High School. She was 15 when they first had sex. He was convicted of felony child molestation and rape of a child in King County Superior Court.
'A crime of passion'
Mark Blilie is straightforward about what happened.
"It's not that I don't have remorse for the people I hurt," he said.
"Well, of course I'm a relatively intelligent person. I knew I was breaking the law. A man does not commit a crime of passion after going down and checking the statute books. I understand parents don't send their children to school to have affairs with the teachers. I know that."
Toni Blilie's parents, who live in Kirkland, declined to comment except to say they love their daughter.
Mark Blilie's ex-wife filed for divorce in 1996 and has since remarried. She also lives in Kirkland and had no comment except to say she and her children are doing fine.
Judge Janice Niemi, who presided over the case, has retired and was not available for comment.
Their love outlasted prison
Toni Blilie denies she was a victim.
"I never felt manipulated, I never felt like a victim," she said. "I never felt that Mark was grooming me or preparing me or trying to get in my pants. I never felt like that."
Both argue that their marriage proves the strength of their love, that it has endured through imprisonment.
"I was in solitary for 93 days, I never stopped thinking about Toni," Mark Blilie said. "I just felt that in some way, shape or form, it wasn't over.
"So what's that tell you? That it wasn't some kind of ephemeral roll in the hay that some guy had because of some midlife crisis. That it wasn't some school-girl crush."
Both Blilies say they can't explain what occurred.
Mark Blilie might have come closest to explaining his actions in a manuscript he would like to get published. The 75-plus pages go back to the North Dakota origins of his family, how he married his high-school sweetheart from Nathan Hale High School and had two children. Eventually, it leads up to 1993.
"I had no way of knowing that seated in the class that first day of school, September 1993, was a 13-year-old girl who would eventually change my life. A girl who would prove to be the most outstanding student in my 10-year career. This girl would also come to adore me with a single-mindedness matched only by my affection for her. Her name was Toni Pala," Mark Blilie wrote.
"Obsessions are not easily understood, and where one ends and love begins is a subject best left to clinicians," he continued, noting he had never been attracted to other students, was never tempted before and was known in a school joke for "hating everybody."
If Mark Blilie and his wife don't themselves understand what happened to them, the marriage also is a puzzle to some people associated with the case.
"It's certainly not illegal," said Scott O'Toole, senior deputy prosecutor who handled parts of the Blilie matter.
"He's paid his debt to society."
But aside from the fact Mark Blilie was convicted of a crime, the marriage leaves other questions, he said.
"Obviously, one of the concerns is a child of 13 would be just a year into being a teenager. Once a person gets their hooks into the child, you never get them out. I don't know if that's what happened here.
"You don't know. Maybe it's all sincere. But you always wonder," said O'Toole.
From 1993 to 1995, Mark Blilie and Toni Pala met and talked, often in Kirkland coffee shops. She was in counseling at Youth Eastside Services, and a counselor "put two and two together," said Mark Blilie.
The counselor notified school officials. Blilie was warned to stop seeing her.
Toni's parents hired a private detective. Mark Blilie was arrested in March 1996 and convicted in September.
A no-contact order kept them from communicating with each other. No letters or phone calls were exchanged while he was in prison for 3-1/2 years. Toni went out with boys. She wasn't told when Mark Blilie was released from prison.
Then one day in Kirkland in 1999, they saw each other but didn't speak.
They did get back in touch and tried to move in together in Magnolia but were caught. Mark Blilie was sent back to prison for five more months for violating the no-contact order.
Then in July, after he was released from prison, Judge Niemi ended the separation and said the two could do as they wished.
Toni had moved to Las Vegas to escape the pain of living here. She'd had rocks thrown at her, been egged and called a slut and homebreaker at Lake Washington High School.
She transferred to Sammamish High and graduated in 1998, then attended Western Washington University and the University of Washington before finally deciding to "get out of Dodge" last year, as she puts it.
After Niemi's decision, they went back and forth between Seattle and Las Vegas several times and finally married.
The future lies ahead
They don't know what they want next. They're living with a friend in a Renton apartment. Mark Blilie says he's willing to work menial jobs to keep a roof over their heads and understands he can't teach again. He might like to be a writer.
Toni Blilie is considering going back to school and might like to have her own business.
They have other concerns. Two weeks ago, they were asked to leave the Renton library when someone recognized Mark Blilie from a poster of sex offenders and called police. Mark Blilie says his being ordered to leave was illegal, and there are no conditions in his sentence on where he can go.
"We came to the sad conclusion that maybe we've forfeited our privacy and people will never leave us alone," he said. "I can't teach again. I have no money. So what? Yes, we're happy."
"Would you not be happy?" said Toni Blilie. "Can you not understand it?"
Peyton Whitely can be reached at 206-464-2259 or by e-mail at pwhitely@seattletimes.com.