Alice Munro's daughter rocks literary world with sexual assault claims
Andrea Robin Skinner says her stepfather, Gerald Fremlin, began sexually assaulting her in 1976 when she was nine, and that her famous mother knew.
The daughter of Nobel prize winner and famed author Alice Munro, Andrea Robin Skinner (58), alleges that her stepfather sexually abused her as a child and that her mother stayed with him even after he admitted to the abuse.
Munro, regarded as one of the greatest short-story writers of all time, died last month at 92.
Skinner made the allegations in an essay in Canada’s Toronto Star on the weekend, writing about how her stepfather, Gerald Fremlin, began sexually assaulting her in 1976 when she was nine years old and he was in his 50s.
Skinner said the first sexual assault happened during a visit to Munro and Fremlin's home in Ontario after Fremlin climbed into the bed she was sleeping in.
Skinner said she told her stepmother, who told her father, who did not confront Munro.
"She was adamant that whatever had happened was between me and my stepfather. It had nothing to do with her."
Over the following years, Skinner says Fremlin propositioned her, exposed himself to her, and 'told me about the little girls in the neighbourhood he liked'.
Skinner said he stopped assaulting her when she became a teenager, but she developed bulimia, insomnia and migraines, which she attributes to the abuse.
The Toronto Star reports that Skinner went to the police about the abuse in 2005 when Fremlin was 80 years old.
Skinner said she wanted 'my story, to become part of the stories people tell about my mother... I never wanted to see another interview, biography or event that didn’t wrestle with the reality of what had happened to me, and with the fact that my mother, confronted with the truth of what had happened, chose to stay with, and protect, my abuser.'
Skinner's essay has rocked the literary world as Munro often explored themes of sex and trauma in her critically acclaimed short stories.