Canadian Nobel laureate Alice Munro‘s daughter on Sunday said that her stepfather sexually abused her as a child and her mother knew about the same but still she chose to stay with him.
In an essay in the Toronto Star, Andrea Robin Skinner wrote that when she was 9, her stepfather Gerald Fremlin, in the absence of Munro, sexually assaulted her, AFP reported.
Skinner further wrote that Fremlin, who died in 2013, during the next several years exposed himself to her in car rides, described her mother’s sexual needs and “told me about the little girls in the neighborhood he liked.”
“She reacted exactly as I had feared she would as if she had learned of an infidelity,” Skinner wrote of Munro.
“We all went back to acting as if nothing had happened. It was what we did,” she added.
Skinner also revealed that she went to the Ontario police, and in 2005, her stepfather was charged with indecent assault against her. He pleaded guilty. At that time she was 38 years old, according to AFP.
“What I wanted was some record of the truth, some public proof that I hadn’t deserved what had happened to me,” Skinner wrote.
“I also wanted this story, my story, to become part of the stories people tell about my mother,” she added.
Munro, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013, died at 92 in May. Her death prompted glowing tributes, including from Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
In an essay in the Toronto Star, Andrea Robin Skinner wrote that when she was 9, her stepfather Gerald Fremlin, in the absence of Munro, sexually assaulted her, AFP reported.
Skinner further wrote that Fremlin, who died in 2013, during the next several years exposed himself to her in car rides, described her mother’s sexual needs and “told me about the little girls in the neighborhood he liked.”
“She reacted exactly as I had feared she would as if she had learned of an infidelity,” Skinner wrote of Munro.
“We all went back to acting as if nothing had happened. It was what we did,” she added.
Skinner also revealed that she went to the Ontario police, and in 2005, her stepfather was charged with indecent assault against her. He pleaded guilty. At that time she was 38 years old, according to AFP.
“What I wanted was some record of the truth, some public proof that I hadn’t deserved what had happened to me,” Skinner wrote.
“I also wanted this story, my story, to become part of the stories people tell about my mother,” she added.
Munro, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013, died at 92 in May. Her death prompted glowing tributes, including from Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.