Alice Munro’s daughter says author knew of sexual abuse by stepfather

Nobel Price-winning author Alice Munro’s daughter has revealed her stepfather molested her as a child, and that her mother stayed with him after finding out.

The youngest daughter of Nobel Price-winning author Alice Munro has revealed her stepfather molested her as a child, and that her mother stayed married to him even after he admitted to it.

In an essay published by the Toronto Star on Sunday local time, Andrea Robin Skinner detailed the abuse at the hands of Munro’s second husband, Gerald Fremlin, and her subsequent response.

During a 1976 visit to the couple when she was nine years old, Ms Skinner wrote that Fremlin, who was in his 50s at the time, “climbed into the bed where I was sleeping and sexually assaulted me”.

While Fremlin never raped her again, over the next several years Ms Skinner said Fremlin “made lewd jokes, exposed himself during car rides, told me about the little girls in the neighbourhood he liked, and described my mother’s sexual needs”.

The 58-year-old claimed her stepfather lost interest in her when she became a teenager.

Nobel Prize-winning author Alice Munro’s daughter has revealed she was abused by her stepfather as a child, and that her mother stayed with him after finding out. Picture: Peter Muhly/AFP

Andrea Robin Skinner. Picture: Instagram

Ms Skinner revealed the abuse in a letter to her mother in 1992, to which Munro reacted “exactly as I had feared she would, as if she had learned of an infidelity”.

Fremlin also admitted to the assault in letters to the Munro family – though he described Ms Skinner’s nine-year-old self as a ‘homewrecker’.

“Andrea invaded my bedroom for sexual adventure,” Fremlin wrote in the letters, excerpts of which The Star published.

“If the worst comes to worst I intend to go public. I will make available for publication a number of photographs, notably some taken at my cabin near Ottawa which are extremely eloquent … one of Andrea in my underwear shorts.”

Ms Skinner used Fremlin’s letters as supporting evidence when she reported his abuse to the Ontario Provincial Police in 2005.

Fremlin, who was then 80, pleaded guilty to one count of indecent assault in March of that year. He received a suspended sentence, and was ordered away from parks, playgrounds, and from all contact with Ms Skinner. He was also ordered to submit a DNA sample for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s database.

Munro, however, remained married to Fremlin until his death in 2013 – going so far as to describe him, in a 2004 interview with The New York Times, as “the heroic figure in her life”, Ms Skinner said.

The celebrated Canadian author told her daughter she’d found out about the abuse “too late”, and said that she loved Fremlin “too much, and that our misogynistic culture was to blame if I expected her to deny her own needs, sacrifice for her children and make up for the failings of men”.

Munro’s work often explored men’s abuse of power, child sexual abuse and complicated family dynamics. Picture: Reg Innell/Toronto Star via Getty Images

“She was adamant that whatever had happened was between me and my stepfather. It had nothing to do with her,” Ms Skinner added of Munro.

“I … was overwhelmed by her sense of injury to herself. She believed my father had made us keep the secret in order to humiliate her. She then told me about other children Fremlin had ‘friendships’ with, emphasising her own sense that she, personally, had been betrayed.

“Did she realise she was speaking to a victim and that I was her child? If she did, I couldn’t feel it.”

The revelations come nearly two months after Munro – whose work (somewhat ironically) often explored men’s abuse of power, child sexual abuse and complicated family dynamics – died, aged 92, on May 13.

Ms Skinner, who never reconciled with her mother, said the obituaries and tributes lauding Munro contributed to her decision to go public with her experience.

“I never wanted to see another interview, biography or event that didn’t wrestle with the reality of what had happened to me,” Ms Skinner said.

“And with the fact that my mother, confronted with the truth of what happened, chose to stay with, and protect, my abuser.”