The daughter of the late Nobel laureate Alice Munro has made allegations against her mother’s second husband, Gerard Fremlin, accusing him of sexual abuse. Andrea Robin Skinner, the daughter of Alice Munro from her first marriage, detailed in an essay published in the Toronto Star that Fremlin sexually assaulted her when she was 9 years old in the 1970s. Despite telling Alice Munro about the abuse in her 20s, Munro remained with Fremlin until his death in 2013 “because she loved him too much to leave,” as per Skinner’s account.
Skinner mentioned that her mother’s reaction to the revelation of abuse led to her becoming estranged from Munro and her siblings. It was reported that Fremlin eventually pleaded guilty to one count of indecent assault at the age of 80, a case that was not widely publicized for almost two decades. This revelation has deeply affected the literary world, raising questions about Alice Munro’s legacy as a celebrated writer.
Support for Skinner has been expressed by the owners of Munro’s Books in Victoria, British Columbia, a store co-founded by Alice Munro and her first husband James Munro. Skinner’s family, after years of estrangement, has reconciled and stood by her side in the wake of her disclosures. Despite the troubling revelations, Munro’s children maintain that their mother’s literary reputation is deserved.
Robert Thacker, a biographer of Alice Munro, acknowledged knowledge of Fremlin’s abusive behavior but chose not to include it in his book. Thacker emphasized that the abuse had profound consequences on the family and was a devastating revelation. The complexity of Munro’s personal life and its interaction with her fiction has drawn renewed attention in light of these disturbing revelations.
