Daughter of famed writer Alice Munro says mom knew stepdad sexually abused her as a kid — and stayed with him anyway
The daughter of famed writer Alice Munro says she was sexually abused by her stepdad as a child — but that her mom chose to stay with him anyway, even after she learned about his horrific misdeeds.
Andrea Robin Skinner, 58, describes in a heartbreaking new essay in the Toronto Star how she was just 9 years old when her stepfather, Gerald Fremlin, “climbed into the bed where I was sleeping and sexually assaulted me” at Munro’s home in Ontario, Canada, in 1976.
And that was just the start.
Over the next several years, Skinner said, Fremlin, a cartographer, engaged in a series of disgusting acts that included exposing himself to her, asking the pre-teen about her “sex life,” telling her about her mom’s sexual needs and describing little neighborhood girls he liked.
“At the time, I didn’t know this was abuse,” wrote Skinner, whose late mother won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2013 and is considered one of the greatest short-story writers in history.
“I thought I was doing a good job of preventing abuse by averting my eyes and ignoring his stories,” said the woman, the youngest of Munro’s three daughters.
She said she told her father, Jim Munro, about the abuse.
He did nothing, she said of her dad, who died in 2016.
Years later, she wrote a letter to her mom that detailed the horrors she endured at the hands of her stepfather, who was 88 when he died in 2013. Munro died in May at age 92.
“I have been carrying a secret for sixteen years,” Skinner wrote, according to an excerpt. “Gerry abused me sexually when I was 9 years old when you were in China. … I have been afraid all my life that you would blame me for what happened.”
Munro separated briefly from Fremlin after the explosive allegations, Skinner said.
But when Munro asked her husband about Skinner, he “reassured” her that Skinner was not his type — and described the 9-year-old girl as a “homewrecker” who “invaded my bedroom for sexual adventure,” the daughter said.
Munro eventually returned to him, and the pair stayed together until his death.
“She said that she had been ‘told too late,’ she loved him 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,” Skinner wrote of her mom.
“She was adamant that whatever had happened was between me and my stepfather. It had nothing to do with her.”
At one point during the saga, Fremlin told Munro he’d kill Skinner if she ever talked to the cops and wrote a series of letters that blamed her for the abuse, the daughter said.
“For Andrea to say she was ‘scared’ is simply a lie,” Fremlin claimed. “Andrea has brought ruin to two people who love each other. … If the worst comes to worst, I intend to go public.”
Others told Munro similar sick stories over the years, including a former friend of Fremlin’s who said the stepdad had exposed himself to his 14-year-old daughter, Skinner said.
Fremlin denied it, she said.
His constant abuse left Skinner with a litany of physical and mental health issues — including bulimia, insomnia and migraines — that forced her out of college and nearly destroyed her life.
Years of therapy helped her recover, Skinner wrote. But her relationship with her mom remained quietly fractured.
“I tried to forgive my mother and Fremlin and continued to visit them and the rest of my family,” she wrote. “We all went back to acting as if nothing had happened. It was what we did.”
But that turned into a full break when Skinner told Munro she’d never let Fremlin near her recently born twins.
Her mother responded by saying how inconvenient that would be for her, since she didn’t drive and it would be tough to visit.
“I exploded, and told her our relationship was over,” Skinner wrote.
Two years later, the daughter finally went to the cops.
“For so long, I’d been telling myself that holding my pain alone had at least helped my family, that I had done the moral thing, contributing to the greatest good for the greatest number,” Skinner wrote. “Now, I was claiming my right to a full life, taking the burden of abuse and handing it back to Fremlin.”
In February 2005, authorities charged him with “indecently assaulting” Skinner sometime in the summer of 1976.
He pleaded guilty in March of that year, she wrote, and the court sentenced him to two years of probation, among other things.
Skinner became estranged from her family for years after the conviction, she said. But she eventually made up with most of her relatives, and together they pursued the long journey to recovery.
It was a different story with Munro, whom Skinner never reconciled with.
“My mother’s fame meant that the secrecy spread far beyond the family,” she wrote in the essay, without saying why she chose to detail Fremlin’s crime now.
“Many influential people came to know something of my story yet continued to support, and add to, a narrative they knew was false,” Skinner said.
“It seemed as if no one believed the truth should ever be told, that it never would be told, certainly not on a scale that matched the lie,” she continued. “Until now.”
