The daughter of famed author Alice Munro says she was sexually abused by her stepfather as a child, but that her mother chose to stay with him even after learning of his horrific misdeeds.
Andrea Robin Skinner (58 years old) In a heartbreaking new essay in the Toronto Star In 1976, she was just nine years old when her stepfather, Gerald Fremlin, “climbed into my bed and sexually assaulted me” at their home in Munro, Ontario, Canada.
And that was just the beginning.
Skinner said that over the next few years Fremlin, who was a cartographer, subjected her to a series of unpleasant behaviour, including making her strip naked, asking her about her “sex life” as an early teen, talking about her mother’s sexual desires and talking about a girl he liked in the neighbourhood.
“I did not know at the time that this was abuse,” wrote Skinner, whose late mother won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013 and is considered one of the greatest short-story writers of all time.
“I thought I was successfully preventing the abuse by looking away and ignoring what he was saying,” said the youngest of Munroe’s three daughters.
She said she told her father, Jim Munro, about the abuse.
She said they did nothing about her father, who died in 2016.
Years later, she wrote to her mother detailing the horror she had suffered at the hands of her stepfather, who died in 2013 at the age of 88. Mr Munro died in May at the age of 92.
“I’ve carried a secret for 16 years,” Skinner wrote, according to the excerpt. “Jerry sexually abused me when I was nine years old, around the time you were in China. … All my life I’ve feared that you would blame me for what happened.”
Mr Skinner said Munro had temporarily separated from Mr Fremlin after the shocking allegations.
But when Munro asked her husband about Skinner, her daughter said, he “reassured” her that Skinner was not his type and described the 9-year-old girl as a “home wrecker” who “went into my bedroom for sexual adventures.”
Munro eventually returned to him, and the two lived together until his death.
“She said I’d told her too late, that I loved him too much, and that it was our misogynistic culture that was to blame if I had denied her my needs, expected her to make sacrifices for her children, and make up for men’s shortcomings,” Skinner wrote of her mother.
“She was adamant that what happened was between me and my stepfather and had nothing to do with her.”
During the course of the incident, Fremlin wrote multiple letters to Munro threatening to kill Skinner if he spoke to police and blaming Skinner for the abuse, her daughter said.
“Andrea’s claim that she was ‘scared’ is simply a lie,” Fremlin argued. “Andrea has destroyed a loving relationship and will only go public if the worst happens.”
Skinner said that over the years, other people, including former friends of Fremlin’s, had told Munro similar horrific stories, including one who said her stepfather had sexually assaulted his 14-year-old daughter.
Fremlin denied that, she said.
His constant abuse left Skinner suffering from numerous physical and mental health problems, including bulimia, insomnia and migraines, which forced her to drop out of university and nearly destroyed her life.
Skinner wrote that years of therapy helped her recover, but her relationship with her mother remained quietly fractured.
“I tried to forgive my mother and Fremlin and continued to see them and the rest of my family,” she wrote. “We all started to act as if nothing had happened. That was the way we were.”
However, the relationship was severed completely when Skinner told Munro that he would never let Fremlin near his recently born twins.
Her mother responded that it would be such an inconvenience because she can’t drive and it would be hard for her to visit.
“I was furious and told her our relationship was over,” Skinner wrote.
Two years later, the daughter finally went to police.
“For a long time I had told myself that by bearing my pain alone I had at least helped my family, that I had done the moral thing and contributed to the greatest good of the greatest number,” Skinner wrote. “Now I was claiming my right to a full life and returning the burden of my abuse to Fremlin.”
In February 2005, authorities charged him with “indecent assault” on Skinner sometime in the summer of 1976.
The defendant pleaded guilty in March of that year and the court sentenced him to two years’ probation, she wrote.
Skinner said he was estranged from his family for years after his conviction, but eventually reconciled with most of his relatives and began a long road to recovery together.
Munro was a different story, with whom Skinner never reconciled.
“Because my mother was famous, the secret spread beyond the family,” she wrote in the essay, without revealing why she decided to recount Fremlin’s crimes now.
“Many influential people knew something about my story but continued to support and add to it, knowing it was a lie,” Skinner said.
“It was as if no one believed that the truth should not be told, never be told, much less on the same scale as lies,” she continued. “Until now.”
