I am absolutely horrified. I have just heard about a case of sexual abuse. Familial sexual abuse. This is bad. Really bad. But it’s worse than that. Much worse.
Here’s the case. Andrea Skinner, a Canadian woman, now aged 58, was sexually abused by her stepfather, Gerald Fremlin, her mother’s second husband, from the age of nine, which left her with permanent chronic migraine and other debilitating health conditions.
Her mother, a celebrated and multiple-award-winning author, including the Nobel Prize for Literature, Alice Munro, did not believe her and in fact blamed the child Andrea for what had happened, if anything happened at all.
There began the denials. And the silence.
Did Andrea tell anyone else apart from her mother about the abuse? Yes, she did. She told her stepmother Carole who told Andrea’s father Jim. Did father Jim go round to Gerald Fremlin’s house and smash his face in? He most certainly did not. What he did instead was to tell Andrea and her two older sisters Sheila and Jenny to keep this abuse a secret. Because? Because Alice Munro, his ex-wife was a much-feted writer and ‘her needs were greater than…Andrea’s.’
A man, a father, whose little girl is being sexually abused by her stepfather, a dirty old man in his fifties, is quite happy to let that go to save his famous ex-wife’s writing career. Where do these people come from?
At one point Alice Munro challenged her husband Gerald Fremlin about Andrea. He denied any wrongdoing, stating that ‘Andrea was not his type.’ Unbelievable! Fremlin, meanwhile threatened Andrea that if she went to the police, he would kill her.
And Andrea was not Fremlin’s only victim. It is known that he also sexually abused other children. The man was an out-and-out paedophile. Andrea did go to the police and when charged in 2005, when he was 80, Fremlin (who flatly denied the abuse and called Andrea a liar) only admitted to indecently assaulting her. And for that, he got a slapped wrist and two years’ probation.
But what did the celebrated and Nobel prize-winning author Alice Munro do, after all that? Dump his disgusting ass? No! She stayed with him. Because, in her own words, she loved him too much. She even told a newspaper interviewer that he – Gerald Fremlin, was the love of her life. And that she was lucky to have him. Say what!
Why some women stay with men like these, I will never know. Why they even love men like these is beyond reason.
To love such a man, to stay with a man who abused her daughter in such a despicable way makes her, the celebrated and Nobel award-winning author, Alice Munro, complicit and shame on her. If mothers do not protect their children, who will?
Alice Munro died in May [2024] at the age of 92 and now that these horrifying details have come to light, the literary world is re-evaluating her as this ‘revered’ writer. Her alma mater, Western University and her hometown of Wingham, Ontario are reconsidering their memorials to her. It’s a pity Alice Munro isn’t alive to face that humiliation and shame. And many of her fans are thinking about whether they can read her books and short stories ever again. I wouldn’t bother.
